


You Come with the Moon

by cuddlebone



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Dogs, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Heavy Angst, M/M, Small Towns, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, yes 50k words with only soonwoo as characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 18:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12513996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlebone/pseuds/cuddlebone
Summary: Wonwoo is the exiled son of a wealthy spy who once raised vicious dogs purely to terrorize the village below his house.Soonyoung is a villager who has been habitually feeding the dogs up the hill every night for years now.(In a town of prejudice and hatred, Soonyoung extends a helping hand. Wonwoo grabs it and holds it tight.)





	You Come with the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: Contains mentions of ill-treated dogs; only brief mentions, and they have a very happy ending! And brief mentions of a mentally abusive father. Edging on depression and anxiety. A breakdown of sorts at two different points? And some parts are emotional and dark. At one point, there's lightly implied sexual content, but that's really subtle and easy to miss.

 

If you don’t view people through preconceived judgments of their character, based on their wealth, their physical appearance, or even linking them to mistakes their parents have made that they have no attachment to, then you’re one in a rare handful that includes Soonyoung. It also includes Wonwoo, but knowing that he views people with an open, unclouded mind isn’t as crucial to this story as it is knowing that Soonyoung does.

 

Soonyoung takes people as they come, expecting nothing until they reveal bits of themselves to him. He always meets them halfway at first, letting them acclimate and open up slowly, like a late-blooming spring flower finally opening in July. Those kinds of flowers are the most resplendent once they blossom. He lets Wonwoo tell his story, and he offers him nothing but patience and kindness and a helping hand to lift him from the depths he’s fallen into. And that is the biggest virtue of all, overpowering every one of his all-too-human vices.

It’s as the dogs are just beginning to bay and howl outside that Soonyoung remembers what he’d forgotten to do before changing into his pajamas. He’s just finished doing the heap of dishes after dinner, and as per his routine for the last decade, since he was ten years old, he offers to do the job every night so he can discreetly save the scraps of food on the plates and walk them up the hill to feed the caged, now-howling dogs.

 

Soonyoung is nothing special, and this isn’t just his humbleness urging him to say so about himself. He spent his childhood defying his elders and ignoring his town’s unspoken rules, and in a way, that hasn’t changed. He spent his high school years in neon-band braces and his sister’s old pink coat because his parents couldn’t afford another. His grades were below average, and he decided to skip out on university, which made him the sore thumb among all his childhood friends who were now living in dorms far away from the village. Having everyone’s parents constantly whispering about him and comparing him to their intelligent, successful children was humiliating.

 

 The only good things he can think of, in his past and present, are his helpful habits around the house, cleaning and tidying and chopping wood for the fireplace, and this ten-year habit he got himself into of feeding the dogs. And, he remembers suddenly, the one time he saved a random boy from drowning in a river. Yes, those are his virtues, far outnumbered by his vices.

 

He tip-toes out of his bedroom, because the room mirroring it on the other side of the hall is his parents’ and he doesn’t want to alert them of his whereabouts, and slinks down the hall towards the kitchen. His own shadow scares him in the moonlight shining sideways through a hall window, and he’s ashamed to say he jumps out of his skin, thinking it a ghost. The dogs baying, the night so cold and quiet he can hear the sharpness of their growls and the huffs of their breaths all the way down the hill, reminds him how stupid fearing a ghost is, when he’s actually in the process of going to feed and pet the town’s haunts.

 

There’s a backdoor in the kitchen, one that leads through their tiny backyard and eventually onto the main road that curves up the hill. He takes his coat from the hanger by the door and shrugs it on over his too-small flannel pajamas, picking up the plate of rice-and-beef scraps and gently, in slow-motion, unlocking the metal backdoor. He opens it inch by inch so the rusty metal hinges don’t creak and squeak, and escapes out, shutting it behind him.

 

The pathway is one he made for himself, for these late-night excursions, and it weaves through many other houses’ backyards, since Soonyoung’s family’s place is well off the main road. He walks through wet plants that graze his ankles, and creeps through the old, gossiping neighbor-aunts’ gardens, just in case they somehow see him through their windows. When the shortcut finally drops him off on the road, he feels bare and exposed standing in the middle of the flat, shiny gravel.

 

Even though he’s been raised walking up and down this road every day to visit friends’ houses and even to race down the hill (he wonders, in hindsight, how he didn’t trip and tumble all the way down into the valley), its steepness still kills his calf muscles and dries his throat. The icy air burns the inside of his nose.

 

He’s now up on the crest of the hill, so high and far-removed from the comparatively bustling village where the porch-lights are glowing and the streetlights are shining down below. The only thing here is one old streetlight, positioned right before the road curves to the very top where the spy’s mansion and the road leading up to it begins, as though even the electricians were too scared to install anything farther up the road. This is the unofficial drop-off, the border between a safe village and cursed property, the place no villager crosses.

 

The wind blows the hood of his parka off his head, and his hands are too full to fix it. The wind makes the pine needles in the tree branches rustle and sway, casting moonlit dapples across Soonyoung and the chewed-up street he stands on. He treads onwards carelessly.

 

At the curly wrought-iron gates that bar the dogs shut (the villagers say they’re let loose at midnight every night), Soonyoung hand-feeds the large Doberman with the spiked collar beef strips, watching her lick her chops and bare her long canines so their whiteness glows like the milky moon. The Rottweiler, the second dog and his personal favourite, trots over, letting him stick his wrist through the bars to pat his head and scratch his ears. He slides the plate in through the gap under the bars, and watches them devour every grain of greasy rice. They’re always starving when he comes around, and even more so after their owner died three years ago. Not like _he_ fed them anything but chicken blood.

 

Soonyoung pulls his hand back out and wipes the grease and dog spit off on his jacket, looking up at the towering two-story villa, the front gates of which being what he had just had his arm sticking through. It’s always been a spectacle, by far and wide the most expensive house in the simple, tiny village. Mahogany doors and delicate marble balconies, a huge brick chimney and a Greek-style mosaic pool in the yard, and eight acres of fertile orchard sprawling down the hill behind it and forming its backyard.

 

Behind the dogs, in a lot beyond yet another gate, he can see rows of glossy sports cars reflecting the moonlight off of their untouched paint and spotless windshields.

 

That doesn’t really fascinate him anymore, because he’s used to seeing it up-close every night.  However, when his eyes shift upwards and he sees the figure of a man watching him from the lit upstairs window, he gasps.

 

 

It was the talk of the town back in the day, and grandparents are still willing to give exaggerated renditions of all their experiences and stories over roasted chestnuts and peeled tangerines by the fireplace, if Soonyoung asks politely. He remembers stoking the fire and listening to his grandparents tell him of the dogs and their owner, the traitor who sold himself to the “devils”, also known as bordering countries engaging in a sort of cold war with theirs, who hired him as a local who would spy on the people and relay useful information, and in exchange live wealthy and lofty on the village outskirts.

 

Soonyoung would never dream of telling them that he’d befriended and tamed these dogs. Instead, he pretends to dock his bike in the backyard shed every sunset and swears not to stay out past nightfall, because superstitions and word-of-mouth might as well be reality to everyone here, his simple family included.

 

The man’s dogs were raised to be vicious. Stories (their credibility questionable) tell of the owner starving them for days, before feeding them human limbs and praising them only when they shredded the flesh from the bones. Stories tell of the man, the traitor, training them to sniff out children and old women, and attack them when they had their backs turned. The only ones Soonyoung can attest to being true are those about him bringing them fresh-drained, hot chicken blood to drink, and of how he docked their ears and tails to make them even more menacing. He’s seen _that_ with his own two eyes.

 

When he was in high school he had never been interested in dating, but all the boys who did told stories of how they took their girls on walks late at night, and even ventured halfway up the hill Soonyoung lived on, and protected their coy, terrified girlfriends from the vicious dogs when they charged at them. They talked of scaring the dogs away and impressing the girl so much that she kissed them immediately after, which Soonyoung found laughably corny, and unimpressive if true. These boys were revered, and albeit, again, a made-up story, it only cemented how much of a popular, terrifying topic the dogs made.

 

“Soonyoung, one of our neighbors said she saw you making your way up to the Cursed Hilltop yesterday. Is she going senile, or were you?” His mother fixes her stern gaze across the table, and his father follows suit.

 

He swallows back the response he’d built in his head the moment he’d heard her call it Cursed Hilltop, a superstitious local nickname for the grove of pine trees and the mansion. He pretends to have burned his mouth on his lukewarm chicken soup. “Nope, mom, you’ve always told me to stay away from the dogs, and the… uh, traitor… and his kid.” Soonyoung could call the man that much, because being a spy and turning against your own people was immoral enough in his books, but he preferred to leave his son out of it, because no one knew of him or his motives. Being born under that surname, with that spy being his father, wasn’t his fault.

 

“That’s my boy,” she says, ladling more soup into his bowl as if to reward him for his favourable reply. “You know, word travels fast in a tiny, remote place like this, especially when it’s empty in the winter… we wouldn’t want people thinking you have anything to do with the top of our hill, Soonyoung.”

 

Every word dripped with years of institutionalized prejudice and spite, but (and here’s another virtue of Soonyoung’s, one he never gives himself credit for) his patience allowed him to bite his tongue and nod just enough to get his parents’ gazes off of him and back to the 7 PM news playing on the clunky living room TV.

 

His truce with the dogs was his little secret, as well as his conversation with the traitor to the village many years before, and they were two secrets people would only know of over his dead body.

 

 

There are some memories that a person rarely remembers, but hasn’t forgotten. They’re stored away in some corner in the back of their mind, like a worn but well-preserved book in the back of a library shelf. It’s always there, to be opened and perused and acknowledged, but it mostly sits gathering dust, until it gets knocked out of its hidden perch on accident one day. That’s how memories resurface often randomly, and in the strangest of times, and that’s the kind of metaphor Soonyoung would use to describe the memory of saving a boy from drowning resurfacing suddenly.

 

It’s probably the only heroic thing he’s done in his life, the only thing that kind of makes him bubble up with subdued pride, but even it isn’t enough to write home to; or, in his case, brag about to his friends and parents.

 

He was twelve. The mothers would plan days where they took all their kids out together, preparing pots of rice and sauce wrapped in cloth and stuffed into picnic baskets, so they could make it a day-long ordeal. It meant the children could spend an entire day flailing around and running through fields in their dripping wet clothes, catching thorns and mulch and dust in their hair and skin.

 

The way to get here was to walk up to the very top of the hill, past the border no one crossed, and back down the other side. The villagers took a shortcut to avoid passing by the spy’s mansion, of course, but twelve-year-old Soonyoung knew that it was still very close by.

 

Soonyoung and his friends are splashing around, yelling and canon-balling off the banks and into the deepest parts of the river and then diving to tug each other’s swimming trunks down. Soonyoung was the main perpetrator of all these games, because he was wild and hardly able to stay still. Which was why, despite being poor and painfully average at school, he still made some kind of name for himself in the village and among the kids he knew.

 

Soonyoung decided to wade upriver, alone because the other boys didn’t want to get too close to the “border” where the spy’s orchards and mansion could be seen. The water was murky and yellow-green, and in the areas undisturbed by the ripple his legs made when he waded, he could see insects and fallen leaves lying on the still surface.

 

Underneath him, he had to be extremely careful of climbing rocks covered in moss, because when he climbed through this river in the fall when the water was at its lowest, he had _still_ managed to slip on the moss and land on his back in the water. And he tip-toed, wary of river crabs and the tiny fish that hid in the silt and the rocks and bit his toes.

 

The trees were at their greenest, foliage full and sap running down the trunks, growing sideways so they cast shade over the river.

 

He was so preoccupied with not slipping and cracking his skull open and angering his mother as a result, that he hardly noticed a boy beginning to wade into the water off of the opposite bank. The river was small across but long, flowing all the way down from a mountain beyond these hills they lived on, and all the way down to where it dumped out in the ocean. This meant Soonyoung was wading up the current, and thus stubbornly against the flow of the river, and they’d gotten to a deep, marshy area dammed in by high, mossy rocks.

 

He only noticed the boy when he began gasping and flailing, which would’ve still been too quiet for Soonyoung to notice if they weren’t far from people and in the solace of the forest.

 

“Uh, you okay over there?” Soonyoung called, stopping where he was and letting the cool water running down cut into two around his body and ripple through the gap between his legs. He could feel the soft but persistent pressure of it, racing and flowing downhill.

 

The boy didn’t respond, but he looked alarmed when he spotted Soonyoung, which was odd considering Soonyoung was trying to see if he needed rescuing.

 

He began ducking under the surface and bobbing up only for a moment, gasping and spluttering before being dragged under again, suctioned and thrown around in some kind of whirlpool that was picking things up and carrying them downhill with it.

 

Soonyoung began swimming over, carefully picking his way through the rocks, as though he was afraid of rescuing someone who clearly needed a helping hand. _But why swim in a deep, marshy area with such strong currents if you don’t know how to?_

 

“Um… do you… uh…” Soonyoung was hesitating and he didn’t know why, but when he saw the boy rise up, choke out some water and then fall back under the pressure of the current carrying his body under and out, he realized it wasn’t just some game the boy was playing. He _was_ drowning.

 

He took a deep breath and dove down, following the boy’s figure, which was now being whirled downhill, but entirely underwater. The current had gotten a firm grip on him, and he was surrounded by giant bubbles that glugged and popped, and slow, elegant waves of silt were swirling around him and making his T-shirt and trunks ripple. He saw Soonyoung, and stretched out his hands for Soonyoung to grasp.

 

He grabbed him around the chest and heaved him upwards, kicking with his legs to propel them both. The river wasn’t deep by any means, but this boy had clearly underestimated its strength and fullness in the late spring. When they surfaced, the boy wasn’t choking out water and gasping. He was quiet, but Soonyoung could feel feeble breaths against his ear, where the boy’s face was resting, and he could feel a light heartbeat, like that of a tiny animal and not a boy around Soonyoung’s age, under his skinny, bony chest.

 

When he hauled him up onto the banks, which were all reeds and wet, slippery mud, he was pretty exhausted from hauling twice his own weight out of the depths of a marsh. The first thing he did, though, was turn the boy on his stomach and pat his back until he began choking and spluttering, which, in retrospect, probably wasn’t the right way to do it. It worked, though, and the boy was alive. Now Soonyoung could crawl a few feet away and smooth his shaggy hair away so it stopped dripping into his eyes, and _breathe_ until his chest stopped heaving.

 

A few minutes passed, and the sounds from both of them died out, and some of Soonyoung’s curiosity and bubbliness returned to him. He turned around and stole a look at the boy he’d just rescued, who was sitting propped up by both his arms, his T-shirt clinging to his rising-and-falling chest and streaming water in a puddle around him.

 

Black hair and blacker eyes and translucent skin were what Soonyoung registered. Contrasting starkly with Soonyoung’s sun-nurtured tan, the boy’s skin made him look like he was halfway into the grave. He noticed Soonyoung looking at him, and he made the same face as earlier when Soonyoung called out to ask if he was okay; he looked alarmed, and worried, and now, embarrassed. A light flush was even beginning to settle on his cheeks.

 

Soonyoung felt lame repeating himself, but what else could he ask? “Are you… okay?”

 

The boy nodded, his sopping hair scattering flecks of water everywhere.

 

“D’you need me to walk you home? If you want, I can go get my towel so you can dry off-”

 

The boy shook his head violently, acting as though he couldn’t talk. He was just staring blankly at Soonyoung, his dark eyes narrowed and unreadable, if his furrowed brows didn’t already give away his worry. What he was worried about, Soonyoung didn’t know. He’d been saved, and Soonyoung was another boy his age, and giving him space; there was nothing concerning about the situation.

 

“Hey, you from another village or something?” Soonyoung babbled on, and trust him to run his mouth for hours on end, especially this young, bubbly, good-for-nothing version of himself. “I’ve never seen you ‘round this side of the hill.”

 

At these words, the boy rose up and began trudging away, picking up a pair of sandals that he seemed to have taken off in the grass when he began swimming earlier. He didn’t bother putting on the shoes in his haste to get away from nosy, loud Soonyoung. At the time, he didn’t register that Soonyoung had just saved his life, and his neck. If he had floated down to where the villager ladies were and they’d rescued him, his father would’ve been livid.

 

Soonyoung watched him walk away, confused but afraid to ask why he was going, in the same way as he was afraid and hesitant to save him earlier. As though there was some kind of border between them.

 

He merged into the shadows of the tall green fig trees and Soonyoung lost sight of him. If Soonyoung had followed him or at least tried watching to see where he was going, he would’ve seen him walking straight up to the very top of the hill, where the pine forest was cut through by a curving road that led to his giant, sprawling mansion of a house.

 

 

The dogs begin baying, but this time Soonyoung is already on the outer side of the tall, spiked gates. He slides their food under and watches them devour it, rubbing his hands together to keep them from going numb in the icy wind. It’s always gusty up at the top, which makes it dangerously cold on winter nights- he can even see the dogs’ breath, and the wind whistles when it tunnels through the tree branches and the gaps in the gates.

 

Soonyoung is unable to curb his curiosities from last time, so while the dogs eat, he walks past the gate and a little ways up the road, where the door and front garden would be. It doesn’t do him any harm to walk, anyway, because his muscles are only growing stiffer and colder the longer he stands in the same place.

 

The porch-light is on, a small golden beacon in an otherwise pitch-black forest. The house almost seems abandoned, but Soonyoung knows the spy’s son still lives here. The front door is shiny mahogany, and the hedges along the walkway leading to it are stripped bare of leaves, the bare bark instead shining with a layer of frost.

 

This angers Soonyoung, but only because he’s wondering why someone has been living here all this time and hasn’t ever once considered feeding the starving, whining dogs. In a fit he feels is justified, he swings the outermost gate open and marches up the walkway that leads to the porch and the front door, and swings the knocker thrice, as loudly as he can. He has no idea if anyone will answer and he doesn’t really care who it is, he just wants to get his point across to them.

 

He’s so stubborn and set in his ways about being the absolute opposite of the villagers that he doesn’t even bat an eyelash when the door opens and the spy’s son sticks his head through the skinny gap, staring straight at him. He’s got his face very close to Soonyoung’s, fearless and blank and more intimidating than Soonyoung had expected, to be honest.

 

“Why don’t you feed the dogs?” is all Soonyoung asks, his tone neutral.

 

“Because I’ve seen you do it for the past ten years,” the boy says simply. Not a good answer. He looks ready to go back inside and slam the door in Soonyoung’s face, after learning that it’s yet another villager harassing him.

 

“Why do you still let them loose?”

 

“They haven’t been loose since _he_ died. Considering how much the villagers talk,” he nods his head at the glowing hill below, “all of it seems to be bullshit.” He snarls his words out, and waits for Soonyoung to defend them, or take a jab at him, or something, because he’s got his arms crossed and his eyes are bright and stony.

 

“Why won’t you step outside to talk to me?” Soonyoung’s slew of “why”s is beginning to irritate him, and his perfectly logical inquiry makes him bristle all over. And he doesn’t know how to deal with someone who isn’t waving a pitchfork at his doorstep (so to speak), so that irritates him subconsciously.

 

“Because…” His body betrays his true answer when he jumps nearly out of his skin when one of the dogs lets out a long, deep howl, piercing and loud because there’s only a thin stone wall separating him and Soonyoung from them. This should be Soonyoung’s first clue.

 

 _Very informative,_ Soonyoung wants to say. “So, are the dogs locked in there forever? Or are you trying to score points with the villagers by locking them up for years- because if that’s the case, they still think the dogs are loose all night, so it’s doing you no good.”

 

“That’s none of your business. I… why do you even care, actually?” He’s beginning to actually sound irritated.

 

“Listen. I’m not here to interrogate you, and I really don’t care whose son you are. I just wish you would take care of your dogs, but I guess… I don’t know why I even knocked, this is pointless.” Soonyoung trails off, not embarrassed as much as snuffed-out, like fingers to a candle flame. Because he can tell that this boy feels as though he’s being harassed and judged yet again by some prejudiced, good-for-nothing villager. Arguing his point isn’t worth seeming like those villagers- he’d rather slide food under the gates and offer the dogs what he could in the form of ear-scratches and belly rubs than argue and upset someone who probably gets enough of it anyway.

 

He raises his eyebrows but says nothing before disappearing behind the door and shutting it. Soonyoung doesn’t know what to make of that, so he doesn’t, and instead walks back to the road, shutting the gate behind him and making his slow way back down the dark, eerie hill. This time, he walks down without turning around or looking behind him, so he doesn’t notice the figure watching him retreat through the mansion’s upstairs window.

 

 

The next night, when Soonyoung is collecting the empty plates, he hears a voice from up above. The voice is level, and despite the distance and the whistling wind, it carries over. A dog growls when it does. “I wouldn’t stick my hands in there if I were you.”

 

Soonyoung squints up at him, zipping his parka all the way up to his neck to keep from shivering. The wind up here rips through his soul, and that is one thing that the villagers say that he can attest to. He can hear unidentified noises all around him, rustles in the bushes that could be the wind, or a wild animal, or something even worse. He shivers anyway. “I’m still gonna do it, you know.”

                                                                                                                                                                          

“Fair enough.” The boy is standing on a small balcony that seems to extend off of one of the upstairs bedrooms, curtains drawn and sliding-glass door open behind him to shower creamy light in a square around Soonyoung.

 

Soonyoung doesn’t know how they’re talking so neutrally, since the boy had seemed so irritated yesterday. It’s confusing, but he doesn’t give it too much thought beyond that, instead choosing to go with the flow since it didn’t harm him in any way to make a truce with this boy. He doesn’t realize how much every neutral word spoken in his direction means to a boy starved of socialization and attention. “I… tried to feed the dogs,” he offers, pointing down at the ground, where pieces of dog kibble are scattered across the lot, as though he threw them in handfuls off the balcony.

 

“Doesn’t look like they ate any of it, though.”

 

“Yeah, they don’t really like me anyway. You’re better off feeding them,” he diverts, throwing the task back on Soonyoung. Soonyoung is impressed that he tried, and that he actually took his complaints from yesterday and attempted to act on them.

 

After that, an awkward kind of silence falls between them, where Soonyoung is just standing there, waiting to see if he has anything else to say to him, and trying to discern his features in the light. Yesterday, he got to see him pretty up-close, but he wasn’t concentrating at all on what his face looked like, rather on getting his aggressive message across to him.

 

He notices that he’s in flannel pajamas again, but that isn’t odd- it’s past midnight and Soonyoung’s also in sweatpants and a fleece sweater once stripped of his parka. He notices that he’s holding onto the railing firmly with one hand, knuckles white, implying he’s either afraid or worried. Maybe it’s because he initiated the conversation and he clearly isn’t a big talker, or maybe, if Soonyoung were more observant, it’s because of the dogs circling and growling beneath the balcony.

 

“Well, goodnight,” Soonyoung says, waving with one hand and stepping out of the patch of light his open door had cast down on him. He’s practically invisible now, his hair and jacket so dark they blend into the inky blackness. All he can hear is the crunch of gravel under his light feet as he walks away, and all he can see is the silhouetted shapes of black pine-tops against a cloudy purple sky.

 

 

There is a small part of Soonyoung, somewhere deep, deep down, that knows why he stares so intensely at the boy up the hill every time he sees him. He can almost put his finger on where he recognizes him from, but he can never say for sure. He likens him to a face he saw a decade ago, but he only remembers that face sopping wet and gasping for air.

 

 

This time, Soonyoung waves and smiles at him before giving the dogs their food, because he can see his silhouette in the window. He disappears behind the blinds, and Soonyoung thinks he irritated or embarrassed him again. But a few minutes later, he hears the front door creak, and light footsteps followed by the sound of the rusty iron gate swinging open.

 

He can’t see him until he comes very close, where he emerges out of the dark like a lanky shadow that has been peeled out of it. He’s got his arms crossed and he’s rubbing them to keep warm, but he kind of smiles, kind of scowls at Soonyoung, who takes it as a sign that he isn’t about to yell at him. So he gives him one of his toothy smiles.

 

“I… actually, I kind of came down to thank you for feeding them all this time.” Soonyoung notices that he positions himself behind him, so that Soonyoung is a barrier between the boy and the gates the dogs are kept behind. It strikes him as odd, but he simply pockets the observation and draws no conclusions yet. “Since I can’t do it.”

 

“You’re welcome. Why can’t you?” Soonyoung asks.

 

His jaw stiffens. “I think it’s because I look and smell too much like… never mind. It’s not really any of your business, is it?”

 

“Okay, okay. You’re right, it isn’t.” Soonyoung holds up both his hands to show that he’ll surrender, wary of angering him. He’s kind of gently, patiently tiptoeing around him, trying to keep the friendly-enough conversation going because he’s interested in him. “…I guess it’s about time for you to know me by name? I’m Soonyoung.”

 

“Wonwoo,” he answers simply.

 

 

 

Soonyoung didn’t begin feeding the dogs on his own accord. Ten years ago, when people could still bribe him with cheap toys and empty promises, he had been biking around at the top of the hill, always stubborn against his parents’ and the villagers’ words.

 

It was one of those dry summer days where the sun burned as it beat down on his back, and the grass rustled and hissed like a roaring fire from being so brittle and browned by the constant heat and sunlight. His sandals were caked with dirt from digging them into the plowed soil off the edges of the road. His throat was dry, and he was waiting for his friends to return from the corner-store down the hill, idly doing laps to try to forget about the stinging from his raw, skinned knees and the fact that his parents could never afford to give him pocket money.

 

When the man himself, the tall, wiry spy that sold his soul to the devils, opened his front door and began down the hill, in Soonyoung’s direction, Soonyoung panicked. He tossed his bike towards the edge of the road and began running so he was taking three steps for each one the spy took, out-walking him by a while.

 

“Wait, wait! I have money for you,” he said, knowing exactly how to capture Soonyoung’s goldfish attention span with sparse but well-chosen words. Soonyoung’s entire mode of operation changed as he spun around and let the spy catch up, until he finally stood in front of him, imposingly taller in a tailored suit. Doing this went against everything his parents ever taught him, but he stopped caring when money was brought up. Soonyoung tried wiping his grubby hands on the backs of his shorts, now self-conscious under the man's intimidating gaze.

 

Here was the thing- Soonyoung had never had spare change or pocket money in his life, so even empty promises from terrifying men who had served time in prison could lead him on. His family was dirt poor, and even though the village was small and simple and no one besides the spy was well-off, they had always been the poorest family. At the time, he was aware of their struggles to make ends meet, but he couldn’t help feeling like his parents _chose_ not to indulge him and buy him what he wanted. He didn’t realize that it was an option that wasn’t available, and most of his meals were plain rice and garden-vegetable stew growing up for a reason.

 

Further, Soonyoung had gotten in trouble earlier that month for stealing some change from his mother’s wallet- she caught him red-handed easily, because she took great care to count every bill they had so as to be sure of exactly what she was spending. It was the money for their water bill, but all he’d wanted was to try one of those expensive sour candies that everyone else was always sucking on. He had cried himself to sleep that night.

 

A desire to fit in with all the other children and not being able to is crushing when you’re ten years old. He felt left-out for only buying the cheapest candies, and rarely at that, and for being the only kid in tattered shirts that were hand-me-downs and practically washed to shreds. It was so bad that he had been thinking of how easy it would be for him, stealthy and nimble-fingered, to steal a few pieces off the shelf and hide them in his pocket next time he was at the store. Looking back, maybe it was good that the spy tricked him with his empty promises, because otherwise Soonyoung would’ve fallen down the rabbit hole that was shoplifting and thievery, and he wouldn’t be able to live with the regret he would feel nowadays if he had.

 

So it wasn’t even a conscious decision to turn around and listen to this man’s words.

 

“I have money for you if you do _one thing.”_ He raised one index finger to illustrate his point, and Soonyoung was too afraid to pop off and tell him he wasn’t stupid, and he understood him without the gesture. But somehow, he knew there would be a catch. Money didn’t grow on trees, as his father always said- if it did, ten-year-old Soonyoung would’ve plucked every leaf even off the highest pine branches.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Feed my dogs while I’m gone. You don’t even need to give them anything. I just want them to stay alive enough.” He checked his watch and decided he was running short on time. “Throw them a bone or two, let them fight over it, whatever, and I’ll give you the money by the end of the month when I’m back in the country.”

 

Soonyoung never got his money, and that was when he learned that this man was as hollow of kindness and humanity as the villagers had said he was. Some stereotypes stemmed from truth, after all, but that didn’t mean their stories weren’t still exaggerated and ignorant. But what did develop as a result of this conversation was the habit of feeding the dogs every night before bed. He never quite managed to shake that one off.

 

Thinking in retrospect now, as he stealthily opens the backdoor and locks himself back inside his warm, dark house, he realizes that this man was Wonwoo’s father. He wonders what it must have been like to have been raised by someone like him.

 

 

Tonight, the rain is relentless. Icy droplets trickle down his back through the gaps in the hood of his jacket, making his entire body shiver- the ones where his spine rattles and he lets out an uncontrollable, shuddering sigh. He has his fists balled up inside of the sleeves, conserving warmth, and he walks briskly and determinedly.

 

Once the dogs are fed, he jumps in place, remembering that he used to do that sometimes in the past to warm up. All he can think of is the bed of burn-his-fingertips-hot red coals that he had just stoked and laid out flat in the hearth of his family’s wood stove. He can’t wait to stick his cold nose where the hot air wafts off of it, and hold his chapped hands out to absorb all the warmth.

 

Because it’s always windy, the rain doesn’t fall regularly- it falls in sideways sheets that billow and change direction with the wind, like small, whistling tornadoes around him. He can hear but not see branches creaking above him, and the sound of the raindrops clinking as they land on the lone metal streetlight.

 

He wonders if Wonwoo is doing alright in there. He’s most definitely alone, and he’s probably content with the solitude, but Soonyoung wonders if he has any heating. It’s a huge mansion with a brick chimney sticking through the roof, so he’s sure there is. But even if all the answers to all his questions are laid out for him, it won't stop him from wondering.

 

The dogs eat their food, scarfing it down as quickly as possible, and run back to the dryness of their doghouse immediately. Soonyoung is so cold that the idea of curling up with them in the no-doubt smelly, unkempt doghouse sounds nice for a minute.

 

He can’t see anything, and when he tries walking back down the hill, he finds that one of the tree branches was blown off and lies in the middle of the road now. It’s not nearly big enough to bar his way, but there’s still a long way down under the branches of similar pine trees, and he’s just now realizing that it might not be safe to walk beneath them. In fact, the entire hill is so lined with huge, ancient pines that the tree roots have grown under the gravel road and twisted it and ripped through it in some parts, making it riddled with ridges for as long as he can remember.

 

He needs to wait until the rain and wind subside. His parents won’t notice his absence, and if he gets knocked over and crushed by a fallen tree branch this high up the hill at this late an hour, it’ll be a much tougher situation to explain.

 

He returns to where he started, and walks beyond that, thinking that he might find shelter near the gates to the house. He’s in an edgy mood now, cold and a little bit scared of the storm and being stranded atop this wild, abandoned hillside, so he gets startled when the front gate swings back and forth and creaks loudly.

 

He’s startled again when he looks beyond it and sees a tall, wiry figure shrouded in black rise up, carrying a crate of what looks like chopped wood. His heart leaps into his throat and is painfully pushed back down when he gulps, and it finally settles back where it belongs deep in his chest when he remembers that it must be Wonwoo. It’s unmistakable, it can’t be anyone else. Soonyoung is such a scaredy-cat.

 

 When Wonwoo sees him, huddled into himself, face crinkled and eyes closed from the wind and rain battering it, he isn’t startled at all. He knows it must be Soonyoung, even through the fog, because he’s unmistakable and it can’t be anyone else. He eyes him slowly and warily. “Do you need… help?”

 

“Nuh… nope. I’m just waiting until the storm dies down to walk back home,” Soonyoung says, teeth clenched and chattering at the same time, and eyes still firmly shut.

 

“That’s- that’s fine.” Wonwoo turns and pushes the front door open with his foot, hauling the crate inside and setting it just beyond where Soonyoung can see in. He returns to the doorway, shielded from the rain. He stares at Soonyoung, as though genuinely not knowing what to do or how to offer help or sympathy and instead just watching him. He seems to be remembering what the hospitable thing to do is in this kind of situation, and simultaneously working up the courage to actually do it, and Soonyoung can almost see it bubble up, _very_ painfully slowly, to the surface. But Soonyoung’s patience is immeasurable and he flinches and braves himself against the now-sleet raining down on him, waiting for Wonwoo to come around.

 

“Um, actually… do you think it might be better for you to wait inside?” He’s hesitant and wary and clearly stepping miles out of his comfort zone, opening himself and his home up to a stranger and a _villager_ like Soonyoung is certain he’s never done before. This only makes Soonyoung appreciate the words even more than he ever would’ve.

 

“If you’re okay with that. You don’t sound too sure of it yourself,” Soonyoung chuckles, his teeth flicking against each other painfully as his jaw rattles.

 

Wonwoo takes a little more time- and Soonyoung is patient- but he makes up his mind. “No, I won’t go back on my word. Come inside,” and he turns away curtly, leading the way and holding the door open for Soonyoung, who walks carefully up the front garden, his joints most definitely frozen together now. He hesitates before stepping inside. The children were always betting on what you could find inside of the spy’s house. Piles of jewelry, some said, a museum of marble busts and European paintings, others said, and pantries full only of meats and cheeses and wines, Soonyoung had said. Some said that children went missing because they were kidnapped and kept in torture chambers in the spy’s house, and others thought he’d have skulls and dismembered body parts lying around.

 

No one else had ever gotten this far- but then again, no one else had ever bothered treating the spy’s son with any semblance of basic decency and politeness. Soonyoung shook his head very gently, reprimanding his thoughts and childish musings about being the very first man to see the inside of the house and live to tell of it. He realizes he won’t be telling anyone of it, nor of his interactions with Wonwoo or of his habit of feeding the dogs. Some things were meant to be kept white lies and harmless secrets, and others are meant to be put to rest and walked away from.

 

He steps down on the first tile inside of the house, breaking down every border and barrier. He takes off his shoes but keeps his coat on, in case taking it off makes it seem like he’s making himself too at-home for Wonwoo’s taste.

 

“Shut the door behind you,” Wonwoo orders, picking a few logs out of his crate and stalking away into a room extending off the foyer and leaving Soonyoung on his own to admire the house. Soonyoung shuts it, sealing off the menacing sounds of the storm almost entirely, save for the light whistle of wind that seeps through the keyhole.

 

Soonyoung doesn’t even notice that he has his mouth wide open. The tile is creamy and polished, covered with dated, silky Persian rugs, and every light is a crystal chandelier. He pads through, cold tile seeping through the holes in his worn-through socks and making him cold.

 

When he enters the room he saw Wonwoo go into, he finds him feeding and tending to a huge fire deep in the heart of the fireplace. He’s poking around with tongs, and he seems to have the uncanny ability to sense Soonyoung’s presence. It’s probably because he’s so used to living alone that he can hear even the lightest breath or the gentlest patter of feet as long as it isn’t his. “You can sit, I guess,” he says without turning around, and probably not intending to sound as passive-aggressive as he does.

 

Soonyoung dusts the droplets off the waterproof face of his coat before perching on the edge of an armchair close to the fire. He stretches his hands out and basks in the warmth, and he can swear he feels the heat run through his body and soften his frozen joints. “Thank you for inviting me in. I’ll leave as soon as it clears up.”

 

“ _Hmm_ ,” is all Wonwoo mutters, but Soonyoung takes it as a good sign and continues talking.

 

“So, how long do you plan on keeping this fire going for?” He stretches his legs out, still keeping them near him out of politeness. “We usually let ours die before midnight, so we can go to sleep while the house is still warm,” he supplies cheerfully.

 

“I don’t let it die.” Soonyoung chuckles, but Wonwoo just eyes him from where he’s crouched in front of the fire, still dead serious and wary. “Only once the sun’s out, then it’s warm enough without it.”

 

“So, you sleep next to it?” Soonyoung isn’t tactful with his words and questions, but it’s usually so endearing coming from him that most people don’t mind.

 

“Does it matter? What if I _don’t_ sleep at all?” He’s irritable enough that it’s plausible he hasn’t gotten any sleep lately, Soonyoung thinks.

 

“It doesn’t, I was just curious,” he says, a bit sheepish.

 

Wonwoo mutters something again, and now Soonyoung is silent, admiring the room around him, nothing like he’s ever been in before. It’s beautifully put together, but it feels like it’s never been lived in, probably because it’s far too large and luxurious a house for just two people, one of which is now dead. There’s no dust or sign of abandon though, so it seems like Wonwoo handles the upkeep. He doesn’t ask any other questions even though he has many, fearing that he’s stepping on Wonwoo’s toes by doing so.

 

Wonwoo is watching him when his gaze turns back to the fire. He has an uncanny way of gazing so that it feels like it bores through Soonyoung, not unlike the cold wind outside does when he leaves his jacket zippers open.

 

He gets up and walks over to the window, pulling the curtain away and peering outside, his expression troubled, and as expected, worried. His eyebrows are knit together. “It’s still pouring,” he says gloomily. Soonyoung cannot for the life of him tell if the gloominess is brought on by the weather itself, or the fact that it hasn’t lightened up enough to warrant Soonyoung leaving.

 

Soonyoung walks over and tries to peek out the window himself, stepping in front of Wonwoo so they can both look out together. But Wonwoo steps aside so they aren’t standing so close. “I think it’s slowing down, actually.”

 

“It really doesn’t-”

 

“It’s good enough. See the break in the clouds over there?” He points up, jabbing into the window glass and leaving a fingerprint, where the clouds are just thin enough to become translucent wisps as they cross over the white moon. “That means it’ll be light rain for long enough for me to get home.”

 

He makes for the front door, Wonwoo trailing behind him. Soonyoung is casual about this, and Wonwoo seems surprised- Soonyoung isn’t dawdling or asking intrusive questions, or treating him strangely at all. Wonwoo watches Soonyoung pull his boots on and lace them up, before rising up, face flush from all the blood rushing into it while he bent. He smiles. “Thank you for letting me stay inside. I really appreciate it.”

 

Wonwoo just nods silently, reaching over to twist the doorknob and hold it open for Soonyoung. He watches him walk down the pathway, stepping through clear puddles that would frost over into black ice soon enough. The bare hedges drip-drop slowly. Soonyoung turns and waves at him, in that childish, endearing way where all his fingers stay pressed together, before disappearing behind the wall.

 

 

 

“Psst, hey!” Soonyoung looks up, finding Wonwoo standing bundled right outside the creaky metal front gates, gesturing for him to come over. This was more outright and straightforward-friendly than Soonyoung has ever seen from him, so he trots over.

 

“What is it?”

 

“Oh…” Wonwoo seems to clam up a little once he’s gotten Soonyoung’s attention and brought him over, but Soonyoung waits, because he trusts that Wonwoo clams up because he has a (figurative) pearl deep within. “I was going to ask… do you want to come in for a cup of tea?”

 

He looks Wonwoo in the eye. “It’s not even raining tonight.” It’s true. It’s still damp from yesterday, but the night is dry and cold. Soonyoung _can_ walk home easily.

 

He pulls the rug out from under Wonwoo and watches him flush, a bit of an intense reaction for something so simple. “Then _don’t_. I was just trying to…” he struggles, and Soonyoung learns that he probably shouldn’t have pushed his buttons. He doesn’t know him well enough to tease and joke yet, and Wonwoo kind of seems emotionally sensitive, now that he thinks about it. That’s probably why he’s so blunt and harsh and defensive at first, to keep himself barred away from criticism and prejudice. Kind of like the way his mansion is surrounded by high walls and gates.

 

“I would love some tea,” he says, smoothing things over again. Wonwoo huffs but still leads the way inside, where he makes Soonyoung wait in the kitchen doorway while he warms up a kettle of raspberry tea that had already been steeping beforehand. He was anticipating Soonyoung’s arrival and likely rehearsing how to invite him in. It's oddly endearing.

 

When it begins to whistle and splutter out bursts of steam, he turns it off and pours it in two mugs, one of which he turns to rather awkwardly hand to Soonyoung. He has a habit of hiding his face from his for a minute after he does something awkward or unprecedented, but Soonyoung doesn’t mind. In fact, he finds the shyness and the way he has to force himself to seem more hospitable than his stiff mannerisms and appearance suggest, kind of cute. In an Edward Scissorhands sort of way.

 

“Do you mind living alone?” He asks out of the blue. He’s wondering how lonely it gets in a huge, empty house. This is the time of night where he’d usually be nodding off, but he’s bright and nocturnal by virtue of being in such interesting company.

 

“I definitely prefer it to the prior arrangement.” Soonyoung thinks about what “prior arrangement” might mean, and then realizes that probably means his father. So that answers his question.

 

Soonyoung leans against the doorway and watches Wonwoo blow the steam away every time it rises out of his cup. “It’s two in the morning but you’re up drinking tea,” he comments.

 

“So are you.” Wonwoo raises his eyebrows pointedly as he stares at Soonyoung, who withers under the gaze. It’s not that he’s scared of it, it’s that it feels like it shoots bullets and daggers into him every time. Since the first time he looked Wonwoo in the face, he’s felt delightfully intimidated by the sharpness in his eyes.

 

“Can I make a guess as to why you aren’t asleep?”

 

“Be my guest,” he sounds lazy, and for the first time, something pleasant, besides surprise or worry or aggression, graces his face. Soonyoung thinks his sharp, high-strung features look even better like this. “I doubt you’ll guess what it is, though.”

 

And he seems confident in guarding his secrets, like he’s just fortified the barracks behind which he hides his fears and memories and troubles.

 

“This house is haunted by a ghost, or a demon.” This isn’t what he actually thinks; this is a warm-up round, because it’s fun to extend this conversation since it’s one of the first whole ones they’ve had where Wonwoo doesn’t shy away and Soonyoung isn’t afraid of seeming impolite or stepping on his toes. No, because Wonwoo’s _smug_ this time, smug as a dragon wrapped around a chest of treasures that he’s sure nothing besides him will touch. “And you’re scared of it.”

 

“No. You’ll have to try harder,” Wonwoo tilts his head to one side, taking a sip of his cooled tea.

 

“You’re afraid of the dogs,” Soonyoung states simply, this time saying what was actually on his mind in the first place. Not unkindly, not rudely, not in a way that belittles it or makes it seem it isn’t a valid fear. After all, it’s only a hunch, and who is he to know what Wonwoo has been through? He’s just absolutely sure it is, and he’s absolutely _sure_ he’s pulled the rug out from under Wonwoo again by the expression on his face.

 

He’s seen him standing on the balcony, clutching onto the railings and glancing only quickly and tentatively down at the dogs. He’s seen him jump out of his skin too many times when the dogs begin baying and growling. And he’s seen the dogs growl the minute they catch a whiff of Wonwoo’s scent or see his figure. He has no idea what it’s all about, but he’s observant enough to have noticed it all.

 

Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are stone-cold again and his lips are pursed tightly. He stares at Soonyoung, who stares at the ground sheepishly, which gives him more confidence in scrutinizing Soonyoung’s motives without shying away from eye-contact. “How did you come to that conclusion?” is what he finally asks, his voice lower and breathier than before.

 

“I guessed. And I _kinda_ , _sorta_ noticed your behavior changes when the dogs are active,” he winces. “I just want to see if I can help, if that’s it. Because the entire village is afraid of them and I don’t give a shit, but I… you… I don’t know.”

 

Wonwoo coils back in disgust. “Please don’t compare me to them.”

 

Soonyoung raises his hands up in surrender, as he often has to do around Wonwoo. “Wasn’t intending to offend you.”

 

Wonwoo runs the tip of his index across the rim of his porcelain mug, and Soonyoung walks over to pull a chair out and sit across from him. The table is only slightly chipped, round and wooden, and the kitchen lights are a strong, warm yellow that fills every dark crevice of the room with light reminiscent of a sunny day. Up close, he can see the velvety, veiny under-eye circles that decorate Wonwoo’s eyes. He’s sure he has some of his own, but Wonwoo’s are much more impressive.

 

“I know that was an invasion of your privacy, and it’s not cool to assume things I don’t know about you,” he acknowledges apologetically.

 

He raises his eyebrows but his face lightens, and Soonyoung is glad they’re on the same page now. “It’s alright. You seem to have this special way of preventing me from getting upset, even if you say something that would usually make me flip this table,” he says, matter-of-fact.

 

Soonyoung is sure he’s not joking, and this startles him a little. He wonders what happens when Wonwoo goes into a fiery rage in this huge, empty house, with no one to console him and (Soonyoung hates to assume, but hearing of his father) no one to teach him how to control his anger. He’s not intimidated, and even if Wonwoo were to go into a rage when he’s around, he’s probably strong enough to keep him from harming him.

 

He hardly knows that Wonwoo dropped this bomb mainly to test whether or not Soonyoung is like the other villagers, in which case he would’ve left the house or showed fear somehow. Wonwoo is as reserved and lofty as the hill he lives on, and he wouldn’t usually throw out bits of personal information like this. But this is Soonyoung and Wonwoo hasn’t felt like this around anyone else, and this is a quiet test that Soonyoung has also quietly passed.

 

Soonyoung finds the flattery hidden in his words, though. He enjoys his company, and Soonyoung’s been told too many times that he has a charming, gentle way with things that seems to pacify and nurture the others around him. He thinks this is what Wonwoo means, but in his own vague way of wording it.

 

“I haven’t slept normally since he got them,” Wonwoo finally confirms that it _is_ the dogs, nodding his head towards the window. He can hear them baying so loudly that it resonates through his ears, and Wonwoo shudders where he sits across from him, shaking the whole table, which makes the cups' contents slosh.

 

“That’s ten years, and that’s insane. Is there really no solution?” Wonwoo tilts his head sideways, very, very slowly, and keeps his eyes trained on Soonyoung. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

 

Wonwoo shakes his head. “I’m just surprised, it’s nothing.”

 

“Surprised about what?”

 

“ _Surprised you care_.”

 

“Did I give off a heartless asshole vibe all this time or something?”

 

“ _No!_ Nevermind.” Wonwoo shakes his head again, and that’s that. “Anyway, there really is no solution. Because _I’m_ not a heartless asshole either, as you so accurately put it, so I’m not going to kill the dogs or set them loose.”

 

“So, why’d your dad do that to you if he knew you were terrified of them?”

 

“ _Terrified_ is an overstatement, Soonyoung,” Wonwoo argues futilely. Soonyoung wants to tell him that losing not only some sleep, but any semblance of it, because of the dogs would be considered being terrified of them. But he lays off, because he isn’t argumentative or aggressive. Wonwoo’s face is growing darker, meanwhile, and he’s chin-deep and floundering in what Soonyoung’s sure are anecdotes and memories his question has brought on. He regrets speaking.

 

 

Soonyoung thinks everything in life happens for a reason. He doesn’t exactly know why or how he and Wonwoo just began talking, and he doesn’t know why he seems to be stuck on the idea of seeing him every night. He says it’s because it’s a habit, but he knows he was never this enthusiastic about feeding a couple of dogs before. No, it’s _him,_ for sure.

 

And they’re quickly becoming opposite-charged magnets to each other, but none of it is against their will. The magnetic tug to see each other every night wouldn’t exist if they weren’t so into the enigma of meetings in the dead of night, so far up and out that not one soul besides theirs hears whatever they say. There’s a wonderful kind of solace in that, a bond that develops almost immediately because they’re both allowed to just be themselves, in a comfortable sphere away from prying eyes.

 

Soonyoung thinks the hours past midnight are quickly becoming his favourites, as quickly as he and Wonwoo are magnetizing to each other. Just the sight of a silver moon rising and hanging high in the sky brings a gummy, eye-curving smile to his face, as does the sight of a tall, lanky figure waiting for his arrival right outside of the huge wooden front door.

 

Wonwoo brings change into his life. Wonwoo’s hard to read and even harder to understand, but Soonyoung is patient and Wonwoo gives his over-eager, slip-of-the-tongue mistakes too many second chances, which tells him the stony glares and the standoffish façade are just that. He has to read between the lines with him, to know what he’s really thinking, and he thinks he’s the only person who’s figured out how to understand Wonwoo after the first few encounters’ trial-and-error- just judging by the sheer surprise that time and time again appears on Wonwoo’s face when he realizes that Soonyoung listens and understands him.

 

Soonyoung isn’t necessarily trying to hack at Wonwoo’s shell, to melt him down, but it’s happening as naturally as their friendship is developing. If you could compare their beginnings as hostile strangers to a dry riverbed, you could say that they’ve reached the point where the snowmelt is just beginning to trickle. And when he thinks about it, Soonyoung can’t wait to see what a Wonwoo fully stripped of any insecurities and standoffishness is like. That’s a point that’s both farther and closer than he thinks it is, and if compared to a river again, he can imagine that it’d something like the rushing, roaring eddies of late spring.

 

The same eddies that once drowned Wonwoo, if Soonyoung hadn’t been there to rescue him. It’s a repetition of that now, but they’re older and it’s a matter of Soonyoung helping Wonwoo open up and become comfortable enough to let him extend a helping hand.

 

And most importantly, they’re falling for each other as quickly as the thawed rivers flow, and Wonwoo is opening up and Soonyoung is helping him unlike anyone else had, but neither of them realize it.

 

 

Soonyoung is adding logs to the fire and masterfully stoking up the reddest coals and arranging the wood so that it catches immediately. He watches the smoke get sucked up the chimney and Wonwoo watches the back of his head from where he’s perched in a ball on the couch, feet folded beneath him.

 

He stretches out his hands to feel the wall of warmth radiating from the plumes of fire deep within the hearth. “Are you warm or should I crank it up a little more?”

 

“I’m fine, thank you,” Wonwoo says, sounding content. “You’re better than I am at feeding and maintaining the fire.”

 

Soonyoung shakes his head. “I have _years_ of lighting the stove back home under my belt, and building bonfires in the pine grove right on the other side of this hill.”

 

He perks up a bit, lifting his head a little higher, eyes wider. His hair is shaggy and thick and he has a few strands that keep falling in his face, and Soonyoung likes them even though he probably needs a trim. “I’ve always wanted to go on a walk in the pine grove.”

 

Soonyoung jumps up. “You _haven’t_? You live on the edge of it, it’s practically your backyard!”

 

“Calm down. And no, not once,” Wonwoo shakes his head. “I would have, if I hadn’t been avoiding villagers…”

 

“It’s really nice. We can go together sometime.” Wonwoo squirms and shrugs and frowns noncommittally, probably thinking of all the different problems he can find in Soonyoung’s proposal just to avoid going, but Soonyoung takes this as a cue to press on. “If you walk all the way through, you basically go in a huge loop around the middle of the hill, and you get to the eastern tip and the view’s all snowy blue mountains in the winter. The wind coming off of them is so cold, it freezes your nose right off!”

 

Wonwoo is lured by Soonyoung’s overeager, impressive words. He nods and tries to envision it sprawling out in his mind’s eye, but all he can feel is the pulsating orange warmth of the fire and the cozy indoor air surrounding him. Wonwoo has an active imagination, but he’s too grounded in the warm pleasantness of this moment to picture anything else. He thinks he feels truly happy and content, if just for a split-second. “I guess that _is_ really nice. I won’t be going anytime soon, though.”

 

“There’s nothing to fear if you’ve got me around, Wonwoo.” Soonyoung’s smile is small, and even though his words aren’t entirely serious, Wonwoo thinks there’s a grain of truth to that. He would probably feel safer walking with Soonyoung, because of all the people he’s ever had the misfortune of meeting, Soonyoung is the only one who makes him feel this way, who’s bothered reciprocating and heeding to Wonwoo’s confusing personality.

 

He leans his head against the arm of his chair, watching Soonyoung with the most curiously non-angry expression on his face. He can feel the muscles in his face all relax when he’s around Soonyoung nowadays, which wasn’t the case until recently. He began trusting him, or letting him in, or something, because he’s subconsciously friendlier and warmer now, and compared to his track record with people, it took him no time at all to thaw and melt around Soonyoung. All of this happiness circulates through him and makes his blood run a little warmer, which in turn makes him feel warm and drowsy.

 

Soonyoung yawns, shutting his eyes so tightly that there’s a cobweb of wrinkles and indents around each of them, raising his hand to cover his open mouth with a palm (out of politeness). Wonwoo is infected when he watches Soonyoung do it, and he feels the hinges in his jaw loosen and stretch into a wide yawn, too.

 

“Well, I guess I _am_ boring enough to make an insomniac fall asleep,” Soonyoung says, chuckling softly. He watches Wonwoo’s eyes, closed, flutter open and he raises his head to throw Soonyoung the most endearingly dirty look he’s ever received.

 

“I’m not sleepy. I’m just… resting my eyes.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, _whatever_. You probably don’t even know what sleepiness is at this point, so we’re taking my word for it. You’re about to catch some Zs, big time,” Soonyoung is still experimenting with how far his teasing can go, but this seems to be the sweet spot. Wonwoo throws a pillow at him.

 

“That could’ve landed in the fire.”

 

“You say that as though I’m supposed to care.” And Wonwoo kicks the other pillow, the one he had his bare feet nestled under for warmth, into Soonyoung’s open arms. Soonyoung doesn’t throw them back, though, and he goes quiet after this. He _wants_ Wonwoo to sleep, and he doesn’t want to distract him from it with his silliness.

 

He nods off eventually, but painfully slowly. Far slower than the average boy should after pulling a near all-nighter. He probably doesn’t even remember how to sleep comfortably. Soonyoung watches him readjust his position too many times to count, or come right to the point where he’s about to settle into his first dreams in a decade, and then jump awake when one of the dogs bays. Soonyoung almost grows annoyed with the dogs for making noise and scaring Wonwoo, and he never thought he’d feel anything like that towards them.

 

“How do you fall asleep?” He asks abruptly, his eyes still closed.

 

“Um…” Soonyoung frowns and thinks for a minute before replying. “Well, you get warm and relaxed. You lie down, close your eyes. Think of something nice.”

 

“Like what?”

 

Soonyoung uses the stoker to slide the embers around in the dying fire. “Aren’t I nice? So think of me.”

 

He chuckles breathlessly. “ _Pass._ I’d rather think of the dogs.”

 

“You’re evil.”

 

When Wonwoo’s asleep, his face as relaxed and blissful as Soonyoung has ever seen it- lips not pursed but pink and parted gently, chest rising and falling in smooth, level breaths, eyes held shut not by force. Soonyoung suddenly feels awkward, watching him sleep when he’s nothing to him and that’s something only people who are far more intimate should have the luxury of doing. He gets up once the fire fades into embers that are safe enough to leave to burn out while asleep, and gives Wonwoo one last look-over. He hopes the dogs don’t startle him out of this, and he hopes he’s not only having dreams, but sleep so full and sound that he wakes up happier. He deserves it.

 

Soonyoung puts on his jacket and shuts the front door while conscious of the fact that Wonwoo’s hearing is sharp, and he will awaken if he senses anything louder than a mouse pattering up through the rotten inner walls of his old mansion.

 

 

Soonyoung doesn’t like the idea of coming up every night knowing he’s going to be invited into Wonwoo’s house, and entering it empty-handed. He’s raised in a culture where people always bring something along with them, and he doesn’t know if this is just in his family’s nature or many others’. Either way, Wonwoo can’t refuse muffins freshly made at the village bakery.

 

“Where are you going?” His mother asks, and he freezes, hand half-twisting the knob of the front door. She has a feather-duster in her hand and her apron on, but she looks like she’s in a good mood.

 

He has no reason to lie to his mother. Now that he’s older, he knows that she’d always tried to provide everything he’d wanted for him and the poverty wasn’t her choice. He knows that she raised him almost too well for a woman who rarely had more than a dollar to spare; and he can see the thick silver streak running through her smooth black hair, and she’s wearing the same sweater she’s washed and worn and patched back together for the last twenty years. Soonyoung remembers hugging his mother’s neck and nuzzling his face into that sweater when he was young.

 

But still, his mother is prejudiced like everyone else. He loves her the same way she’s worn that sweater (to bits), but he can’t tell her that he’s going down the hill to buy muffins for the exiled spy’s son who lives atop their hill, the same boy he’s been meeting for the last month or two in secret. The discomfort of lying and keeping things that really don’t need to be kept from her makes him uncomfortable. It makes him feel like he’s doing something _bad_.

 

“I’m meeting a few of my friends by the town circle. I’ll be back before it gets dark,” he lies through his teeth, trying to tell himself it’s a white lie and not a filthy black one like he’s thinking it is.

 

And it’s simple as that. She grabs the sides of his head in that way, gentle but firm, a dichotomy only mothers have mastered, and kisses his forehead goodbye. “Have fun, and don’t forget to zip up your jacket. It’s going to be cold tonight.”

 

“I will.”

 

Once he closes the door behind him, he leaps over the three steps and out the front gate, bolting out of his little cul-de-sac. The road leading up to his house is lined with short, crumbling stone walls painted with (now chipped and faded) pinks and yellows, and there are salvaged, broken car parts propped up against those walls on the edges of the road and in the end of the alley. He ducks under the overhanging, overgrown olive tree and dodges the old car parts left out in the middle of the road as he has since as long as he can remember. Everything is a routine in this place, and knowing every crack in the gravel road and every hole in the stone walls and every missing leaf on the grape vines has made him a creature of mundane habit.

 

The walk is nothing special. He’s seen it all, and he’s so used to it that even the tiny sprigs of new growth on the brittle vines don’t excite him that much. What excites him is anything relating to Wonwoo, and if he were with him now, Soonyoung would be skipping and pointing out the bits of green here and there, signifying that winter is coming to a close.

 

He gets a dozen oat muffins from the bakery that stands just a few metres away from the road that leads up Soonyoung’s hill. He’s heard that this bakery is run by some relative of Wonwoo’s, but he doesn’t really care enough to ask him if it’s true.

 

And he walks all the way back up the hill, but this time from the very bottom of the road and all the way to the windy, dry crest. As usual, his lungs are burning, but he doesn’t notice that until he’s out of the area where any neighbor or aunt or villager can see him, because he’s too busy looking skittish and twisting from side to side to make sure he’s not being watched. The _last_ thing he needs is an old aunt telling his mother she saw him carrying a bakery bag and bringing it into the old spy’s mansion.

 

He feeds the dogs half the muffins and sits down on the ground, among the dead brown pine needles covering the dirt, and leans his back against the pine tree behind him. The bark crunches and he’s sure brittle chips are now stuck to his jacket. He puts his head in his hands to dull the throbbing. He isn’t in good enough shape to climb the entire hill in one go without a break.

 

“You’re here early. Are you okay?” comes Wonwoo’s voice from directly above him. He looks up, and his vision is dizzyingly blurry, but he thinks it’s the effect of seeing Wonwoo in daylight more than the effect of his own maladies. His skin looks like white marble and his eyes look brighter than Soonyoung’s ever seen them. It’s the effect proper rest gives him, too, that makes Soonyoung ogle so much. He finally looks less sallow and sad.

 

“I ran up the hill. Here, I got you muffins.” He thrusts the bag of muffins up in Wonwoo’s face.

 

“You aren’t going to come inside to share them?” Soonyoung raises both his hands and Wonwoo helps haul him upright. Once he’s up, neither of them move, because Soonyoung is staring at him and Wonwoo is looking down at the ground, pretending not to notice. Wonwoo is a good few inches taller than him, but he really likes the difference.

 

“Did you… sleep well?” He asks out of the corner of his mouth. Wonwoo shifts his gaze from the ground to Soonyoung, and the expression is unreadable until Soonyoung realizes that it’s embarrassment strung across his lofty features. “Five minutes of shut-eye is sleeping well if you haven’t for years, I guess,” Soonyoung adds quickly.

 

“Exactly. I felt overwhelmed by four hours of sleep. I woke up all disoriented, like I wasn’t even in my own home.”

 

Soonyoung smiles involuntarily, the happiness tugging at the corners of his mouth no matter how much he tried to resist it.

 

“What?” Wonwoo asks, sulking at Soonyoung.

 

“I’m just happy. Can’t I be happy for you?”

 

“You were still there when I fell asleep, huh?”

 

Soonyoung shifts his gaze away from Wonwoo. Talking about it brings back the same discomfort he felt yesterday night while watching Wonwoo sleep and realizing what he was doing. He shrugs. “Kinda.”

 

“That’s not an answer. I know you were, anyway,” Wonwoo looks away, overcompensating by glaring at the trembling bushes behind Soonyoung to try to mask the embarrassment creeping back onto his face. He has his eyebrows furrowed, braced against the cold wind, and his black eyes and full lips are shining. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

 

Soonyoung snorts suddenly and loudly, twitching his frozen pink nose around like a rabbit burrowing for plants in the snow. Wonwoo isn’t used to such strong, passionate reactions to the things he says, nonetheless someone who listens to every word and reacts on it. “What kind of a person would _do_ that?”

 

“Well, it was weird to wake up alone on the living room couch. I would’ve preferred to be woken up,” Wonwoo mumbles, but Soonyoung thinks he’s just making excuses to complain, because he doesn’t know how to act, and he never knows how to, when Soonyoung is being pleasant.

 

 

There is much of Wonwoo that Soonyoung hasn’t seen yet, but as always, he has faith that slowly and surely, he’ll see every side of him. For now, it’s only a sliver; like a door left ajar, a thin shred of light shining through the sliver and into an empty room. But naturally, and with every passing day spent sitting together by the fire, sharing muffins and tea and small talk that only gets bigger, the door is being pushed open, inch by inch. And once it is, Soonyoung will be allowed into the deepest corners of Wonwoo’s being, but neither of them know it yet.

 

The night before, he saw how contentedness and relaxation looked on Wonwoo; his hands curl into something like paws when he slides them up his sweater sleeves, like a tiny, aloof woodland animal curling in on itself, he digs his bare feet into the corners of the sofa to warm them, and the corners of his lips also curl upwards like his hands. Tonight, he sees the beginnings of trust and fondness bubbling up to Wonwoo’s surface. And he learns that his simple presence, his boyishness and kindness and patience, spreads to Wonwoo and that it's what makes the worries dissipate from his face.

 

Soonyoung sits and talks, because he has many old, stupid campfire stories to tell and Wonwoo loves to learn and listen. Wonwoo nods when he needs to and asks all the right questions at all the right times, and Soonyoung is so animated, jumping up and down and acting out the climaxes of his anecdotal stories, that Wonwoo _almost_ smiles.

 

Soonyoung’s satisfied enough just knowing- or feeling, because he’s beginning to really get a grasp of how to preemptively sense and read Wonwoo’s cues and expressions- that he can make Wonwoo happy somehow. It validates him, and it makes him feel happy, too.

 

He ends his story, and they both sigh and settle into perfect silence. Their voices trail away and soon it’s only the sound of the wind gusting through the cracks in the weathered windowsills, and the fire crackling and the coals chiming.

 

He feels a little less like a stiff stranger in Wonwoo’s house now, and that allows him the privilege of looking out the windows to gaze at the icy, moonlit hillside. The moon casts a silver-blue glow over everything, and the night shadows falling off the trees and bushes are eerie. Soonyoung loves imagining all the critters out there, hunting and scavenging, and feeling a delicious shiver go up his spine when he remembers that he’s tucked into a huge, safe house.

 

When he turns back, he finds that Wonwoo has very soundlessly and suddenly fallen asleep again. He’s cocooned, and he looks so much smaller and more harmless than he ever does when he’s awake. Six feet tall, shoulders sharp, jaw set, eyes stony, he looks lofty and stern. But now he looks vulnerable and almost… childlike. Like a kid who probably had to grow up too fast to catch up with the way people were treating him, so when he’s at his most vulnerable, he’s stripped of all that harshness he’s been shouldering.

 

Soonyoung only needs a split second to question whether or not he should leave him where he is on the couch like he did the last time. No, he won’t, and he makes up his mind quickly.

 

He walks over and tucks his hands under Wonwoo’s sides, with all the gentleness of someone handling a sleeping baby animal. He can feel the curve of his spine, his vertebrae sticking out under his thin skin and sweater, and that warmth that sleeping bodies always emanate. He picks him up, but it’s awkward, because the last thing he wants to do is carry him bridal-style up the stairs when he’s still so reserved and against any kind of physical interaction with Soonyoung. Soonyoung imagines Wonwoo waking up and finding himself in that situation, and he winces at the idea.

 

Once he lifts him- and he’s truly as light and delicate as a tiny, soft-furred animal- he half-carries and half-walks his sleeping body towards the staircase.

 

Carrying Wonwoo is easy. Up on the second floor landing, in the corridor, Soonyoung has one hand wrapped protectively around Wonwoo’s middle, while most of his weight is leaning against Soonyoung’s shoulder and his head is cradled into Soonyoung’s neck. He uses the other hand to fumble around blindly for some kind of light switch, but he’s completely unfamiliar with the house’s setup and he really wants to avoid dawdling and waking Wonwoo up.

 

He looks down at Wonwoo, and realizes for the first time that Wonwoo’s face is nuzzled into his neck and that his hand has been absently wrapped around his bony torso all this time. Wonwoo must be so tired, because nothing like this can usually get past his sharp senses without alerting him.

 

Soonyoung decides to take a peek into each room until he finds the one that should be Wonwoo’s. The first door to his left is locked, so he tries the one facing it on the right. He squints and through the meagre light coming in through the room’s window, he can make out a desk and bookshelves and leather armchairs. A study of some sort. He closes the door and wanders farther down, making sure to twist the door handles quietly. There’s a storage room that looks eerie in the moonlight coming through its balcony doors. It’s all cobwebs, glistening on the cardboard boxes piled everywhere, hanging in huge swaths, or dangling, ripped from being walked through or blown apart in the wind.

 

“What _isn’t_ in this house…” he murmurs, gasping when Wonwoo stirs and pressing the hand to his mouth to shut himself up.

 

After attempting to open probably ten other doors (half of them are bolted shut), he realizes that Wonwoo only uses small, select parts of the mansion, the rest of it remaining shrouded in cobwebs and darkness. He finally reaches the end of the hall, and he should’ve tried this door first, because it’s Wonwoo’s bedroom and if he had noticed the faint light coming through the bottom of the door he would’ve known.

 

He brings Wonwoo in and sets him on the unmade bed, white linen sheets and silky quilts kicked into hills around where his body should lie. Soonyoung sets him, going down with him and keeping a hand under his neck as he puts his head on the pillow. It had hardly been two minutes since they were both downstairs, but it felt more like an hour.

 

He lingers in that position for one split-second too long, and he can feel gentle, hot exhales coming from Wonwoo’s slightly parted lips, ghosting over his cheeks, making all the tiny hairs stand up. He doesn’t give the sensation anymore thought (he won’t let himself until he’s closed the front door behind him and walked far down the road), and instead moves away to cover him with a blanket, tucking the edges under his chin and over his shoulders.

 

 

 “You carried me to bed yesterday,” is how Wonwoo greets him tonight, blurting it out as though he was so shocked when he remembered it that he couldn’t even contain it. He doesn’t look mad. His face looks blank like the expression was knocked off of it when he remembered. His eyebrows are even a little higher than usual.

 

“Yeah. I did.”

 

“It was nice of you. By the way, the light switch is on the far-right side of the wall once you come off the stairs," he says, unable to stop himself from smirking.

 

“You were awake that whole time?” Soonyoung isn’t even surprised; Wonwoo is sly and strange, but he’s more upset that he let him fumble around in the dark, pretending to be asleep and probably relishing in his confusion. He doesn’t think of it now, but Wonwoo was probably relishing in leaning into his warm, dependable shoulders and neck, too.

 

“I’m not too bad at playing dead.”

 

“I can’t believe you let me struggle with your stupid light switches,” Soonyoung crosses his arms, but it’s not long before he thinks of something wittier to say. “As they say, and now’s the perfect time to say it; whatever helps you sleep at night, Wonwoo.”

 

“Stop it.” He sticks his skinny leg out from where he perches on the couch and kicks Soonyoung’s shoulder in violent protest, which makes Soonyoung laugh even harder.

 

Wonwoo is laughing, and this feels like such an achievement that Soonyoung wants to picture the moment perfectly and store it away in some basement cabinet in the back of his mind, so he can always think back on it in clear, vivid detail. Everything in his face folds; his eyes crinkle downwards, the skin on his nose wrinkles and the tip of his nose crinkles and twitches as he wheezes quietly.

 

They’re not even laughing at the stupid thing he said anymore; they’re laughing because they’re feeding off of each other’s positive energy and amplifying it. The dim room, with the shadows shrouding the corners and only half the lights on, feels like it’s glowing, like a crystal in sunlight, catching the rays and reflecting them in every direction. And it’s all because of Soonyoung’s presence; if the walls could talk, they’d testify that this was the loudest, longest laughter that’s ever been heard in the room.

 

“Do you think I’m funny?”

 

“Not in the slightest.”

 

“But I made you laugh,” Soonyoung protests.

 

Wonwoo shrugs and squirms, eyes searching the room the same way he’s probably searching for an excuse in his head. He just ends up shrugging again, and Soonyoung is so overjoyed that he can’t even find a counter-argument.

 

“Soonyoung, don’t you ever get sleepy when you’re here?”

 

He shrugs.

 

“If we’re going to be communicating in shrugs from now on-“

 

“I mean, no. Because I have you to be preoccupied talking to, so not really.”

 

“Well, do your parents ever ask where you are?”

 

“Wonwoo, they go to sleep at nine.” Soonyoung didn’t think it’d sound as cutting as it does when he says it out loud. It’s almost like he’s questioned why Wonwoo didn’t realize that, and he regrets it; and judging by the look on Wonwoo’s face, he’s uncomfortable. He’s just not accustomed to what’s such a regular thing to anyone else, because his life has been so different all this time. He doesn’t even sleep regularly, so he hardly even knows how to sleep, and who knows where his mother was and when (let alone whether) his father slept.

 

“Right.”

 

 

Soonyoung guides Wonwoo up the stairs, because this time he caught him blinking and stifling a yawn when he began to pick him up, and he won’t let him pretend to be asleep again. In his bedroom, Wonwoo sits at the foot of the bed. When he was pretending to be asleep, it was easy for Soonyoung to just back out of the room and shut the door softly, but now everything feels awkward.

 

Wonwoo’s skin is like marbled grey granite that glows even in a shut-off room, although the moonlight that washes the entire room in whiteness may add to the effect. He looks like a statue in general; he’s sitting there, in the same position for the last minute, and his cheeks look chiseled, his sloping nose looks sculpted, and his hair looks glossy like a statue that has been painted and polished. Soonyoung is staring quite shamelessly, and Wonwoo is staring right back. Because Soonyoung’s hair is wind-whipped and mussed from pulling his sweatshirt hood up and back down repeatedly, and his eyes are twinkling like two lost, fallen stars that landed in Wonwoo’s dark room, and Wonwoo finds it as beautiful as Soonyoung finds him.

 

They’re wordless for a while, and all that can be heard is the gentlest rain and the sharp clicks of his tiny nightstand clock ticking and tocking.

 

One of the dogs lets out a drawn-out, throaty howl, and Wonwoo lurches up, all evidence of that fond drowsiness that had blanketed his body evaporating. Soonyoung jumps when Wonwoo does, and he turns away, setting his hand on the door handle and twisting it slowly, thinking that he’s lingered for too long.

 

“Soonyoung…” His voice is just above a whisper, but Soonyoung still turns when he hears his name.

 

Wonwoo shies away from his gaze and shakes his head softly. He nods at the door. “I’m sorry, go on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

Soonyoung closes the door again. He knows what Wonwoo needs, but he’s not going to guess out loud. He needs to hear him say it, because it’ll feel like an imposition otherwise. But he’s perfectly willing to do it if Wonwoo just asked, putting himself out on the line, practically begging Wonwoo to take that last step and trust him, to just talk to him. “What were you going to say?”

 

“I was going to ask you to…” He tilts his head sideways and stares at a patch of moonlit tile, letting himself trail off.

 

“To stay?” It’s Soonyoung’s turn to speak hardly louder than a whisper, his voice trembling in his strain to keep it low enough to match Wonwoo’s.

 

Wonwoo nods, and he thinks Soonyoung misses the surprise and relief that dance together across his face like the shadows dance across the ceiling, but Soonyoung sees it all, even when he’s turned away and making himself a place to sit on the cushions by the window. Because if Wonwoo’s around, Soonyoung’s eyes feel glued to him and he notices everything he does. The cushions are littered with books, and he picks one up and asks if he can read it. Wonwoo nods quickly, inviting him to do so.

 

“Soonyoung?” Wonwoo’s voice is small, and it sounds distorted from the way he’s craning his neck up from his recline to talk.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Do you think we’d be able to pull off some kind of a sleepover sometime? Like, could you convince your mom you had to stay out overnight?”

 

Soonyoung shrugs and drums his fingers against the hard-cover book in his lap. “Yeah, why not. It’s easy. I can tell her I’m going camping with one of my friends or something like that.”

 

Wonwoo doesn’t answer, but he sets his head back down on his pillow, probably thinking. Soonyoung, on the other hand, is keeping it in, but he’s overjoyed that Wonwoo wants him around so much that he’s inviting him to spend the entire night at his house. It’s surprising, especially for someone aloof like Wonwoo to propose the idea.

 

Soonyoung doesn’t really like to read. He’s doing it so there’s no awkwardness in the air, so he can pretend to be invested in the book and Wonwoo doesn’t feel like his neediness and debilitating fear are too pronounced. He’s also doing it so he doesn’t make Wonwoo feel uncomfortable when he rolls around in his bed and falls asleep- which happens quite immediately. Soonyoung stares at the neatly printed paragraphs, absorbing none of it, his thoughts still swirling with Wonwoo, flipping through pages of the volume until he’s sure he can go.

 

He doesn’t want to leave, but he can’t stay here all night yet. Before he steps out of the room tonight, he makes sure Wonwoo is cocooned and blanketed and burrowed deep into his thick comforters, and he reaches over, just barely stopping himself from smoothing the hair away from his forehead and running his hand over his face. And as he’s walking down the hill, he makes it a mental priority to think of some lie to tell his mother about camping out overnight with his friends.

 

 

When the winter deepens enough, when the temperature stops dropping and simply stagnates in the same coldness, every village road coated in slippery black ice, every window ledge decorated with icicles, Soonyoung finds himself wishing for the warm spring sun. And as soon as the summer hits and settles, the harsh sunlight and humidity and the tall, brittle grass, Soonyoung immediately wishes for sweater weather again.

 

Usually, when he looks out the window in the morning, he sees nothing but grey clouds and little red-breasts and sparrows flying back to their nests (sometimes with worms and straw in their beaks, if Soonyoung observes carefully) before the short break from the rain and thunder ends.

 

Today, he thinks spring might’ve actually sprung. And he’s always caught off-guard, every year, because the day before it looked like winter, but today the trees are dripping snow-melt and every branch is flecked with green buds. He blinks, he sleeps for a few hours, and the seasons change; like a snap of mother nature’s fingers was all it took.

 

This means it’s almost time to plow the fields under his house. He’s looking out the window, the glass flecked with dried raindrop stains, and he can see the flat, unturned dirt, glistening in the sunlight. There are still patches of snow, melting slowly. So spring is still finding its footing and fending off the winter.

 

He wants to refuse to wear a turtleneck today, because it’s too much of a wintery thing and he almost blissfully believes that dressing lighter will force the weather outside to yield to his wishes for warm winds and sunlight. When he opens the window briefly, he’s blasted with such harsh wind that his ideas are forgotten and he changes into a thick wool sweater anyway.

 

“It’s warmer today,” Wonwoo announces when Soonyoung arrives on his doorstep that afternoon.

 

“I could feel it in the air when I woke up. You can smell it- _smell!”_ Soonyoung sniffs violently, wrinkling his entire nose up, and exhales, satisfied. It smells like damp dirt, dewy tree bark, and decomposing pine needles (which smell rather nice). Wonwoo follows his advice, and Soonyoung is amused when he flares his nostrils and closes his eyes.

 

“I’ll miss the winter,” Wonwoo sighs, tucking his hands into his pockets. Soonyoung and Wonwoo could not be more different; Soonyoung is sick and tired of the winter at this point, and he won’t begin missing it for a good few months, but Wonwoo finds something wistful in leaving it behind for warmer seasons.

 

They’re walking, Soonyoung flanking the edge of the road on one side and Wonwoo on the other, their shoulders almost brushing. Their legs are still moving in sync, crunching, grinding, pressing down on the pine mulch and pebbles. The sky is wintery blue; clear, the wind sweeping away any heavy clouds. It’ll become baby-blue soon enough, when the flowers start to grow. For now, it reminds him yet again of all the farming he has to do, and he mentions it in passing to Wonwoo. “It’s almost time to plow the fields.”

 

Wonwoo perks up, suddenly interested. “For the summer crops?”

 

Soonyoung coils back, surprised at Wonwoo’s eagerness. It’s because he’s dreading the task that he didn’t expect excitement, but he should’ve known by now that anything he feels, says, or does, Wonwoo will naturally feel, say, or do the opposite of. It’s happened too many times to be intentional, so it’s just a part of their dynamic now. “Yeah. Why d’you sound so excited about it?”

 

“It _is_ exciting. Tell me more, Soonyoung.” Wonwoo begins walking, setting a slow, leisurely pace, and Soonyoung trots to catch up, spending some time trying to match the length of his stride with Wonwoo’s before he begins to talk.

 

“You’ve clearly never done it before. I’m too young to have a broken back from years of helping plow,” Soonyoung complains, clutching his lower back to accentuate his point. Wonwoo’s eyes are alight, dewy and glistening like the trees and dirt. “Well, the dirt is fertile after a break over the winter, so it’s ideal. You wear rain boots, and you churn it up with a rake or a tractor or something, and you plant your seeds.”

 

“Do _you_ tie a flowery-printed bandanna around your head and sing old nursery rhymes when doing it, too?” Wonwoo asks, his voice alight with some kind of mischief as well. The warmer weather is doing something to him, awakening something warmer and brighter- or maybe it’s Soonyoung effecting his mood, as he always does.

 

“That’s what my grandma does, Wonwoo, not me! And don’t tell me you didn’t know it was an old-lady-farmer thing.” Soonyoung steps in front of him, blocking his path. He crosses his arms and grins. His high, rounded cheeks and sprite-like smile are the brightest things on the hill. They’ve hit a dead-end in their short walk around Wonwoo’s yard, and they turn around and make their way back to the front door.

 

“No, I knew. I just think you’d look cute dressed like that, singing like that.” Soonyoung is still blocking Wonwoo’s path, but Wonwoo simply turns around and begins walking back. Soonyoung huffs and catches up, yet again.

 

“The longer I know you, the weirder you get.”

 

“That’s the general idea, I think. Half of why I can’t keep friends past the acquaintances point.” Wonwoo says it all so casually, and Soonyoung isn’t quite familiar enough with him to know if the nonchalance is to mask the hurt, or if it’s genuine apathy after years of failed friendships.

 

“Well, it’s keeping me around. Unleash it all if you want me to _really_ love you.”

 

Wonwoo stiffens and turns away from him, embarrassed. Soonyoung is shameless, and Wonwoo’s skin crawls as a result.

 

 

His mom wakes him before the sun has even risen, telling him to put on his work clothes and meet her and his dad in the fields at the foot of their hill, where the main road and town square merge with the skinny, winding road that snakes up their hillside (the one Soonyoung takes every night to get to Wonwoo’s house).

 

Soonyoung is lean and well-built, and his parents show their pride in his tall, sinewy physique by making him the family’s personal pack mule. He trips down the hill, the sky having lightened from deep, bruise-purple to something light and bluish in the time it took him to get dressed, and he hears the sound of the rakes, whipping through the air when his parents swing them up and clattering against the rocks and dirt when they hit the earth, before he sees his parents.

 

“We decided to start working early in the morning this year, so we can finish long before it gets dark tonight,” his father greets, handing him a rake and pointing out the general area and how many rows Soonyoung should do in the field.

 

 “Yeah, no kidding, dad. I can’t even see what I’m plowing, that’s how early we’re starting this year,” he grumbles. He knows he can get away with it, because it’s one of the privileges of being the youngest boy and the only one still living with his parents. They let him pop off and they extend his curfew sometimes.

 

“All of your friends will be helping their parents, too, Soonyoung,” his mother reasons. “So you’re not missing out on much today.”

 

“All of my friends are off in the capital going to university,” grouses Soonyoung, wiping away his bangs with the back of his hand, because they keep swinging down into his eyes as he works. What he said is true; but his one dear friend is probably sleeping soundly in his plush, pillow-laden, linen-and-quilt-blanketed bed, just up the hill from where they stand. The sky is lighter, and he tries to spot Wonwoo’s mansion, but he can’t because the grove of pines surrounding the house offers full coverage year-round.

 

“We brought breakfast down. Sandwiches and tea. You’ll get a break to eat soon. Now work,” his mother commands. She knows the mention of food will get Soonyoung to work harder, and within a few minutes, he’s no longer plowing at the same speed as his parents, because he’s made his way very far down the row and his forehead is glistening with droplets of sweat.

 

It’s easy, methodical work; swing the rake up, hack down precisely and deeply, and shovel the dirt up into a mound. But it’s laborious on his body, and he knows his palms will be red and covered in shiny white callouses by tonight. His legs will feel like they’re on fire every time he stands up, and the muscles will even spasm when he’s in bed trying to sleep.

 

He wants to sleep in the dirt like he used to when he was young. His mother will wake him up and ask him if he’s trying to cheat his way out of working nowadays, though. In reality, he’s been spending every night up the hill with Wonwoo, sitting on an embroidered velvet ottoman in the corner of his room, guarding him from the dogs and watching him fall asleep. Wonwoo only feels safe and protected enough to actually succumb to sleep when Soonyoung is around him, and Soonyoung is more than happy to oblige. The only issue is that his nightly hours of sleep take a strong hit, but that’s nothing he’ll ever admit to Wonwoo.

 

 

Soonyoung sets the rake and spade so they’re leaning against the porch railing, and he swings the brass knocker too many times to count. He can hear Wonwoo’s careful, quiet footsteps coming closer to the door. That’s enough to make him smile involuntarily, before he even sees him. “It’s me,” he offers before Wonwoo has a chance to look through the peephole.

 

Wonwoo unlocks the door (it was locked all the way, because it took three clicks for him to be able to swing it open), and faces him with a hand on his hip. He’s got his sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head, and his hair is all messy and ruffled. He waits for Soonyoung to talk, but not before he gives him and the farming tools a once-over.

 

“I know I’m not supposed to be here during the day, because someone might see me, but. I was helping my parents in the fields-“

 

“I couldn’t tell,” Wonwoo interrupts obnoxiously. Soonyoung’s pants are splattered and flecked with reddish-brown dirt, his hair is ruffled like Wonwoo’s, but it’s a tangled, wind-ruined, sweat-coated nest rather than a fluffy, just-rolled-out-of-bed one that he would love to run his fingers through.

 

“Let’s not make fun of the person working, when you look like me knocking on the door was your cue to get out of bed,” Soonyoung says, making Wonwoo scowl and smack his shoulder.

 

Soonyoung looks through the gaps in the metal front gates, being here for the first time in full daylight and seeing all the rain-splattered luxury sports cars lined up in the lot. The blueness of the sky and the ripples of white cloud are reflected in distortions in the cars’ glass windows and glossy paint jobs. “Are those all yours?”

 

Wonwoo’s eyes follow Soonyoung’s, lazily, all the lines on his face flat and devoid of any excitement. “I guess so. You can take one, if you want. Keys are in some junk drawer somewhere,” he drawls, sounding extremely uninterested.

 

“No! I’m not like that! I was just asking.”

 

“Not like… what?” Wonwoo frowns, genuinely perplexed. He scratches the back of his head.

 

“Not here to use you for your house and your cars and your money, Wonwoo.”

 

Wonwoo raises his eyebrows in genuine surprise, like this is new to him, that Soonyoung can be friends with him and have no desire or intent to leech off of his privileges. Soonyoung feels kind of bad for being the very first person to break this to him in all his nineteen years. Before he can mull it over too much, he cuts through the tense silence. “Anyway. Get dressed.”

 

“And what force can compel me to do that?”

 

“ _Me_. But that’s not it. I want to take you to a secluded field, right around the corner over this hill. Teach you how to plow and stuff, since you were interested.” Soonyoung wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t an opportunity to be around Wonwoo, to talk to him and watch him fumble and get upset with himself for not perfecting it on the first try. And on top of that, Wonwoo did ask many questions about it the other day.

 

“Oh. Are you sure no one will see us?”

 

“I’m positive. Everyone in the village is buying seeds or polishing their rakes and shovels today, no one’s going to be out to see us.”

 

“Al-alright. Do you want to come in while I get dressed?” He asks, swinging the front door back and forth, slowly, making the creak of the rusty hinges stretch into a drawn-out noise.

 

“I’ll wait right here,” Soonyoung gulps. He doesn’t want to watch Wonwoo get undressed. He uses the tip of his mud-caked rain boot to scuff at the tiles near the front door, focusing intensely on this pointless action to avoid Wonwoo’s lingering gaze. “…fresh air is better than sitting in doors,” he continues stupidly.

 

“Suit yourself, weirdo,” is all he says before closing the door.

 

In the time it takes Wonwoo to get dressed and meet him outside, Soonyoung is thinking thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking of, shaking his head to clear them, and thinking of them again anyway.

 

They’re walking, Soonyoung leading by a few feet because he can’t look Wonwoo in the eye until he reins himself in and because he’s the one who knows where they’re going. Wonwoo picks up a long fallen branch, freshly fallen judging by the fact that it’s still crowned with prickly green pine needles, and he’s entertaining himself by poking Soonyoung’s back, ears, and neck with it. It tickles and pokes his skin, and he keeps shivering, hair rising from the sensation, and brushing the needles off of his coat, but he isn’t complaining.

 

He _really_ likes Wonwoo’s playfulness. It makes his heart happy to know that they’ve stepped over some sort of milestone in their relationship and reached a point where he’s comfortable enough to tease him (and be teased back in return), and mess with him and even call him names affectionately. And spring, even in its earliest, coldest days, is bringing this playfulness out so quickly that it’s catching him off-guard.

 

At some point, he grabs the branch when he can feel it beginning to poke into him again, lightning-fast so Wonwoo can’t retract it, and turns around to whack him with it. Now they both have bits of green pine needles embedded in their hair and Wonwoo’s laughing, and Soonyoung’s heart is as light as the trees are tall and the sky is blue. The pine needles look elegant in a goofy sort of way on Soonyoung, like some little forest nymph wearing a crown of leaves, but on Wonwoo, they look like those golden laurel wreaths that usually decorate marble statues.

 

“I’m a bit disappointed today,” Wonwoo starts, his deep voice much too lively to be disappointed, and that’s how Soonyoung knows it’ll be something light and playful again. Wonwoo nowadays reminds him of soft, cottony clouds, because he’s soft and gentle and he might just fly away, maybe laugh himself away into bits that the wind can pick up and blow over the hills. Sometimes, he also reminds him of a little red fox, a tiny woodland creature, all aloof and curled in on himself, but once coaxed out of his shell, he becomes sly and mischievous and a force to be reckoned with. He appears calm, but his insides are alight with this buoyant, lighthearted joy- or at least they are around Soonyoung.

 

“And why’s that?” Soonyoung plays along, tilting his head to one side. He’s waiting for the punch line.

 

“You’re not wearing a flowery bandana like I envisioned you would be,” he says, peeling away from Soonyoung but getting wrestled and affectionately strangled anyway. It’s just how they play together. “I _really_ think you would look good in one!”

 

“ _Sssh._ I’m not taking fashion advice from you.”

 

They never end up going to the field Soonyoung had set his eyes on; no, they detour into Wonwoo’s orchard, an acres-wide expanse of currently-leafless fruit trees and crunchy, unturned soil. It looks dead and abandoned initially, succumbing to a combination of neglect and harsh seasons, just as Wonwoo’s mansion had once seemed. But it’s easy to tell that by summertime, given ample watering, these trees will be teeming and heavy with ripe fruit.

 

“You’ve got figs, pomegranates, nectarines, mulberries,” he says, his hand outstretched so he can fold a finger down for every fruit he lists off. He licks his lips, and Wonwoo imitates him, unaware of his own actions. “All sorts of delicious stuff.”

 

“How can you tell?” Wonwoo asks, amazed. He’s just watching Soonyoung and absorbing all of his quick, slurred words as they come out, totally encapsulated and mesmerized by them. In fact, half the time he’s hardly looking where he’s going (because he trusts Soonyoung to save him if he walks off the edge of a cliff) and instead watching his pink lips curl and pout and stretch to enunciate words.

 

“Uh, living here. Everyone has these trees in their yard whether they want them or not. That and the rotten fruit cores that fell in the dirt from not being picked last year,” Soonyoung says, pointing his index finger at the browned fruit remains near the nectarine tree under which they stood, clearly eaten through by birds and earthworms.

 

“You’ll need to help me pick them all this summer-” Wonwoo begins, but he stops himself when he sees Soonyoung tear away from him and jump up a tall, ancient pomegranate tree in the row nearby. He scales it in three deft jumps, settling in on the top branch and looking down at Wonwoo from where he sits. When he shifts, the branch shakes and creaks, and it showers dried bark all over Wonwoo. “Oh, showing off, are we?”

 

“I’ll help you pick them, _sure thing_. I’ll have sticky, sweet hands and a basket full of fruit within an hour. Do you know how to climb a tree, Wonwoo?” He sounds almost condescending.

 

Wonwoo scoffs. “You took that too far, Soonyoung. You’re acting like I spent my childhood locked in my room.”

 

“You didn’t?”

 

Wonwoo is indignant. “Hey, I rode my bike. I had play-dates with friends. I… even did some things you villager kids did, like, um, swimming in the river in the spring.” He stutters too loudly, and it’s a lightbulb moment for Soonyoung. He remembers how he’d likened him to that kid he once saved, how he was almost sure it was him, and he’s absolutely sure it was Wonwoo now. Wonwoo can see his eyes widening as golden sparks practically shooting off the top of his head. Wonwoo blinks, and Soonyoung has jumped off the tree.

 

He lands with a dull thud, barely avoiding Wonwoo. “Wait! Swimming in the river, you said?”

 

Wonwoo rolls his eyes. The very first time he saw Soonyoung, he recognized him if only from that instance in their childhoods, when he had rather bravely pulled him out of the water and set him on the muddy river bank. He can still feel the rushing eddies dragging him under, and the warmth and comfort of a beating heart and soft hands pulling him free. Wonwoo can see the water-bubbles bursting and floating around him, and he can see ten-year-old Soonyoung in a soaking, see-through T-shirt that sticks to his torso.

 

He had frankly been amazed that all this time, the topic hadn’t been brought up, assuming that Soonyoung would’ve recognized him immediately and just kept quiet about it.

 

“Yes?”

 

“So it _was_ you!” Soonyoung is breathless when it hits him, so stupidly late, that Wonwoo is the boy he once saved from the river. He wasn’t imagining a resemblance between a boy from a memory and a boy he knows now! “I was so worried that you had pneumonia and you had _died,_ or your lungs were full of water or something.”

 

“I had a cold for a while, but that was all that came out of it. Besides you saving me, anyway.” Soonyoung jitters and fiddles when he’s nervous, and Wonwoo becomes still as a scarecrow, so Wonwoo sets both his hands on either one of Soonyoung’s shoulders to steady him. As soon as he does that, Soonyoung’s image steadies and the blur around his face clears.

 

He’s standing so close, and his eyes are so wide, that Wonwoo can count the skinny red veins snaking around in the whites of his eyes. He can see thin, short eyelashes, catching in the sunlight, and dried skin and dried blood on Soonyoung’s full, pomegranate lips. Wonwoo wants to bite and kiss it all, but like Soonyoung, he reins his impulses in.

 

“Thanks for saving me that day. I probably _wouldn’t_ have died if you hadn’t saved me, but it-“

 

Those pomegranate lips are tilting upwards, never held in a straight line for more than a minute. And they’re grinning, because there’s likely something mischievous on the tip of his tongue, and Wonwoo really wants to tease and bite him now. “Let’s be real, you totally would’ve-“

 

Wonwoo clenches his teeth and tightens his grip on Soonyoung’s shoulders. He’s almost punishing Soonyoung for being so naturally irresistible. “ _As I was saying_ , dummy, it was pretty cool and… brave of you to do that.”

 

“It really wasn’t a big deal. I’m glad I caught you before the river did, and that you’re still here today,” says Soonyoung sheepishly, because he’s shy and Wonwoo is genuinely thanking him for something that happened years ago. He reaches up to manually remove Wonwoo’s hands from his shoulders.

 

“Your hands are hot and calloused.”

 

 His knuckles are a raw pink and his palms are inflamed in a sort of flush, and the veins running blood into his fingertips, which throb and pulse in Wonwoo’s hands as he holds onto them, are blue and green. It matches the scape around them, all soft but cold colours. Wonwoo likes the way it feels to have a hand clasped in his, the feeling of Soonyoung’s fingertips pressing a reassuring warmth into his hands.

 

“You really didn’t recognize me?” Wonwoo’s voice is soft and distant, like it’s still stuck in a vortex of memories of that time by the river.

 

Soonyoung winces. “You can’t blame me! You’ve changed a _lot.”_

“Really? How so?” Wonwoo asks, his lips and eyebrows twitching.

 

Soonyoung kicks at a mound of dirt, sending bits of rock and dried leaf flying. “Taller. Sharper features. Basically not a stubborn twelve-year-old who refuses help until he’s on the brink of death.”

 

Wonwoo laughs, and the two of them fall into silence. There are clouds coming in off the distant, sparkling grey ocean, and with the shadows and shapes of blackbirds flitting by, the sound of crows cawing and far-away wolves howling, the smell of electricity and lightning in the air and the feeling of Soonyoung’s hands in his, Wonwoo’s senses are alive and awake. He feels hyper-aware of how close he and Soonyoung are standing, and how he can almost feel Soonyoung’s exhales brushing by his cheek (because they’re warmer and softer than the wind, but they get picked up by it immediately).

 

“I think my mom mentioned something about the weather forecast calling for rain tonight,” Soonyoung says. “And…” he trails off, lost in thoughts and the gaze he’s fixed on Wonwoo.

 

“And?” The tables are turned, because Wonwoo is the one coaxing Soonyoung’s words out for once.

 

“I told her that I was going to be staying out overnight tonight.” In that spot in the middle of the barren, brittle fruit orchard with the wind blowing their hair sideways and into their eyes, Soonyoung smiles, and Wonwoo smiles back knowingly.

 

 

The moon is covered by low, foggy clouds tonight, shreds of them that drift past and dim the silver light that shines down through Wonwoo’s bedroom window. Soonyoung said he would sleep on the couch downstairs, so as not to be imposing, but Wonwoo decided that it wouldn’t even feel like Soonyoung was in the house overnight if he just stayed downstairs. So a sleeping bag made of spare blankets from the linen-closet was fashioned by a surprisingly domestic Wonwoo, between his bed and the bedroom door.

 

The room is empty, because both of them are making their slow way upstairs after spending hours by the fireplace. Slow, because Soonyoung is wearing borrowed sweatpants (he forgot to bring pajamas) and he tripped his way up the stairs, and Wonwoo found it so comical that he ended up tripping as well from laughing too hard. And after spending ten minutes nursing stubbed toes and comparing them (“mine’s worse, look, there’s some blood!”) at the top step of the staircase, they finally burst into Wonwoo’s bedroom.

 

“It’s 1 AM,” Wonwoo remarks, glancing at the alarm clock. “You’re no good for me, you ruin my sleep schedule.”

 

“You don’t have a goddamn sleep schedule,” Soonyoung barks back, after settling down in his nest of blankets and beginning to examine his big toe again.

 

“Hey. Not by choice…” And that same bubbling resentment that Wonwoo had voiced the very first time they’d talked, the tone he adopted when speaking of prejudiced villagers and his father, rose to prominence again. “You can blame it on dear dad.”

 

Soonyoung gives him a look. He knows Wonwoo’s so accustomed to being neglected and exiled that he does everything in solitude and silence; he lets his anger and misery bottle up because he’s probably never had anyone to listen, he curls up in a corner and deals with his anger all alone when he’s upset. Locked up the hill in this big old house, he’s been forced into heavy quietness all his life. When he suffers, he suffers quietly, so that no one else knows what he’s feeling, and when he’s happy, he celebrates quietly as well. Soonyoung thinks that it’s horrible, but he doesn’t know how to put it into words.

 

“Y’know. If you ever want to talk about anything that upsets you… anything that you need to get off of your shoulders? I’m here for that, I can listen to all of it,” he says, his voice so tender that Wonwoo barely hears it. Soonyoung waits, but he never once checks the clock to see how long he’s waited for Wonwoo to line up his thoughts, organize what he wants to say, and for it to pour forth. No, but he notices that the moon has moved too high to see through the window from where he sits by the time Wonwoo does talk.

 

“I’m kind of weird, right? Not just goofy or quirky, I mean as in, I have issues and I’m aware of them. I’m trying to fix them, but I didn’t have anyone before… _you_. And the issues, they’re mostly, if not entirely, I’m giving the benefit of the doubt here, because of my dad.”

 

Soonyoung offers the slightest nod. Wonwoo isn’t looking at him when he talks, and Soonyoung knows it’s painfully hard to make eye contact when you’re spilling something deep or personal. No matter how much you trust the person- sometimes making eye contact with someone just makes you lose composure and cry. So he continues staring pointedly at nothing and wringing his hands together agitatedly as he talks, uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the act of talking to anyone about his suffering.

 

“When I was little, there was always the stigma because he was the sell-out that became a spy that relays information from locals to enemy countries and all. I’m sure you’ve heard about that.” Soonyoung nods again.

 

“It’s pretty lonely to grow up like that. Alone in this big, spooky house up above the rest of the village. And I had to go to a far-away school because I think everyone knew I couldn’t fit in here.” He shrugs his shoulders, as though trying to dismiss his own feelings or shrug them off, because he’s afraid of getting upset and emotional. “I didn’t really have a proper childhood, and my dad was an ass to me. Stupid things that add up; he didn’t lock me in a dungeon, like the stories some of you villagers liked to spread implied, but he lost his temper and got drunk a lot. He locked me in my room sometimes, but never for too long.

 

“It doesn’t sound like much when I say it now, but after years and years of it, it all snowballs into resentment, and that’s besides the original resentment stemming from the stigma of being born a Jeon, and _his_ son specifically. People _love_ my uncle.” Wonwoo stops and exhales through his nose.

 

“Yeah, your dad’s brother, your uncle, is the one that runs that bakery down the hill, right? I’ve heard he’s nice,” Soonyoung says hesitantly.

 

Wonwoo nods. “’The good brother’, they call him. I honestly wouldn’t deny it if I wanted to, because it’s true. I like my uncle.

 

“The icing on the resentment cake was when he brought these dogs around. I wasn’t even, _ah_ , scared of dogs in the first place. But he was cruel to them, and he made me watch his cruelty, because he said it would make me a man. And then, naturally, they begin to loathe us; catch a whiff of one of us walking down the street and they start growling and foaming at the mouth. And at night, I would cry and tell him I was scared because they barked under my window, and he’d lock me in my room or something. And it just continued like that, except I learned to stop asking him to comfort me and just suck it up all night, and he eventually died.”

 

Wonwoo chuckles, sounding just slightly manic. “The police questioned me to ask if I’d poisoned him or something, at the time. _I wish_. He poisoned himself, inside out.”

 

Soonyoung gets up and settles down next to him, and he untangles Wonwoo’s hands from each other and wraps them in his. _He’s_ wordless, and _Wonwoo’s_ talking a lot, and it feels like the tables have been flipped, just like earlier in the orchard. “So, about the dogs. I’m afraid of them, but I’m too afraid of them to set them loose, because if they hurt anyone, I’ll be guilty. And I’m unable to sleep as long as they’re locked under my window, and I fear they’ll come right back for my blood if I let them go. The only good thing about them is that they led to me meeting you.”

 

Soonyoung blushes guiltily. “Actually,” he starts, “your dad led to us meeting.”

 

Wonwoo's entire body clams up, every muscle stiffening and tensing. His eyes narrow slowly. “What do you mean, Soonyoung?”

 

Soonyoung blushes again, but this time it’s not guilt, it’s because of the shame of having been won over so easily when Wonwoo’s father promised him money. “He came up to me, one time, and told me he wanted me to feed the dogs while he was off on a trip. He said he’d pay me-“

 

“Let me interject and bet that he never came through and paid you.”

 

“That’s right. But old habits die hard, and I kept feeding them for years after he asked me. That’s all there was to it.”

 

Wonwoo shakes his head and practically hisses under his breath. It’s all small, unintelligible, angry noises, all under his breath and deep down in his throat. Soonyoung’s heard of anger that comes from the core of one’s being, but this is another level beyond even that. He’s kind of glad Wonwoo’s good at penning up his rage and that he’s on Wonwoo’s good side, because he’s scary when he’s like this.

 

“Are you upset with me now?”

 

“How could I be?” Wonwoo answers without looking at him, still seething. “No, he, he-“ Wonwoo tries to start his sentence but he stops short every time, and eventually he falls into dejected, angry silence.

 

“It’s okay. We have all the time in the world to talk,” Soonyoung doesn’t know if his words provide any kind of consolation, but he’s trying. “Take your time.”

 

“It’s just that I can’t think of a good enough word to call him. “He” is too neutral, and I never really considered him my dad.”

 

Soonyoung winces and nods. It hurts. He can hear the hurt in Wonwoo’s voice, the gravelly hoarseness that arose (his voice is usually deep and smooth as silk) from trying to dam up his emotions. It hurts to hear the story, but it hurts more to know that Wonwoo is upset right now and Soonyoung’s scared of doing so many things he could do to comfort him. He’s not confident enough in their relationship to hug him or hold his hand or kiss him until he feels a little better, but that’s what he wishes he could do.

 

“Take your time thinking of one. I can offer suggestions, too,” he says, licking his lips. Wonwoo looks at him, and his eyes are alight the same way they always are, but the sweetness is clouded over with that anger.

 

“Can I give you the money he owes you?”

 

“No, no, nope. It’s not about that. Don’t say that,” he gives his hands a squeeze.

 

Wonwoo wants to tell him that the fact that he even talked to him, refused to judge or box him into a category when he first met him, and the fact that he’s sitting right there next to him on his bed, rubbing circles into his hands and listening to him spill things that he’s kept within himself for far too long, is more than anyone else could ever do for him. He had joked that Soonyoung was no good for him earlier, but Soonyoung is the best thing to ever happen to him. And he doesn’t really know what to do with this realization yet.

 

The words stick in his throat and he just ends up leaning, no, falling, shoulders slumping as though the air had been sucked out of him, collapsing face-first into Soonyoung’s chest. Soonyoung’s arms envelop him tightly, the kind of tightness that feels comforting and close. He’s the taller one, but he slouches down so Soonyoung can be the one to surround him, to cup Wonwoo’s head in his hands and bring it down into his chest.

 

“Y’know,” Soonyoung begins, looking down at the head he’s holding against his chest, trying vainly to grasp at a different topic to make Wonwoo feel better, “I grew up really poor, right? I was a bit of an outcast myself, struggled to fit in and stuff. But at one point, I was almost jealous of you for having this huge house, this orchard, all this money.”

 

Wonwoo raises his head and fixes Soonyoung with a dirty look. He’s still in a bad mood, but prickled Wonwoo (with his stone cold eyes and thin, pursed lips) has a dark, dangerous beauty that Soonyoung finds himself attracted to despite the circumstances. Meaning, he shouldn’t be thinking about how good Wonwoo looks in this kind of conversation, but it’s still a burgeoning thought in the back of his mind. “You aren’t jealous anymore, _right_?”

 

Soonyoung shakes his head. “After what I just heard? _Nah_. Anyway, I stopped being jealous as soon as I grew up,” he concludes. He freezes when they fall into silence, because he’s now aware of how close Wonwoo’s face is, just a few inches from his chest and far too close to his face.

 

“Can I get another hug?” Wonwoo mumbles into the silence, not bothering to wait for an answer before butting his forehead into Soonyoung’s collar.

 

“You don’t need to ask for hugs. Just… y’know… come up and give me one or something,” Soonyoung mumbles back, a little stiffly still.

 

“Thanks,” Wonwoo says, and his voice is hoarse. This is the only word he can get out, and he thinks it says enough. “In general, not just for that. But also for that.”

 

“You’re so silly. I’ve done _nothing_ ,” Soonyoung says, beginning to stroke his back hesitantly, touches feather-light, but when Wonwoo sighs loudly and buries his head further into Soonyoung’s sweatshirt, he continues with the motion, reveling as his hand glides over the ridges of his spine and shoulder-blades _._

_I should thank you for trusting me, and talking to me. It seems like a rare person who gets to hear you speak more than a few stray sentences,_ Soonyoung thinks, and it stays a thought, because the silence feels complete and encompassing and he doesn’t think either of them should break it.

 

 

 

Soonyoung is walking in the dark. The shadows of the trees make even inkier pools in the deep night, and the edges of the familiar, steep gravel road seem like endless black voids. He sticks to the very middle of it, because he’s worried about startling some creature that prowls in the bushes. And his imagination, still child-like at its core, likes to muse that the edges of the road that resemble bottomless drop-offs are exactly that, like a strange take on a the-floor-is-lava game. Therefore, he sticks to the middle of the road.

 

The middle of the road means he trips on the tree roots that had grown under and ripped through the asphalt that’d been poured over them when the road was made, leaving wrinkled mounds and twisted ridges for his shoes to catch on.

 

He’s almost to Wonwoo’s house. Just another minute. But he can hear dull footsteps behind him. They’re gaining speed. It hits him like a gust of wind how _dark_ and _empty_ it is, and how unsafe his position is right now.

 

He contemplates the chances of it being an animal. For a very brief, regrettable moment, he contemplates the chances of Wonwoo having let out the dogs. He questions if they would chase him up the hill and attack him like they would to any other villager. In that moment, he can almost hear the loose chains hanging off of their spiked collars and slapping the asphalt, the sound of their nails scratching as they chase him up the road, their lolling tongues and panting breaths. The isolation and darkness is making him scared of things that would never cross his mind usually.

 

All he can think of is how a dog of that size and breed’s bite force could rip his arm clean off of his body. How two of those dogs could maul and pummel and shred him to bits. And no one in this quiet village, where everyone was tucked away in their houses past 9 PM, would hear his cries for help, let alone come up the hill to help him. And that thought made his skin prickle, chilling his spine and making every muscle in his legs tremble and throb and threaten to collapse. He has no idea why he can suddenly feel fear coursing through his veins, fear of something he would laugh off any other day.

 

Once he clears his head and stops walking to listen to the sound coming from behind him, he concludes that he can hear the distinctly sharp snap of boots. His heart stops beating so fast.

 

Soonyoung pulls out his flashlight and shines it behind him. He tilts it around, shooting eye-blinding beams of white light behind him, which make every floating particle of dust in the air stand out clearly. He grins once he zeros in on whoever’s following him, and breaks into a run. The person behind him gives chase, too, their footsteps amplifying and increasing and gaining on him.

 

He’s rounded the corner. He’s crossed the part of the road that no villager crosses. He can see the warm yellow porchlight shining down on the honey-coloured front door. But he slows down?

 

The footsteps sound much closer now. He can hear breathing and panting. _Thump, crunch, thump, crunch._ Soonyoung waits silently, the strangest smirk on his lips. His posture is most casual and relaxed, shoulders (and guard) down, legs bent in a resting position.

 

And the person engulfs him from behind, knocking him a few steps away from where he was waiting, a whirl of wind and delicious smells and thick fabric, sinking their teeth and _biting_ his shoulder through his clothes. He didn’t expect that. He yelps out loud, because it kind of hurts, and slaps gently at the person so he unhooks his vampire teeth from Soonyoung’s shoulder.

 

“Ouch, Jesus! What was that? Since when did you… _bite_ people, Wonwoo?”

 

Wonwoo shrugs but stays the way he is, half-hugging, half-clinging to Soonyoung from behind. “I only bite you because you’re bitable. All soft and mushy and you smell good.”

 

Soonyoung sniffles but doesn’t respond. He’s still rubbing his shoulder. _Maybe_ he was scared, for a half-second, before he shined his flashlight and remembered that the scariest things in the village were the boy he was going to meet and the dogs he’d been petting and feeding for years- this is how he lies to himself. No, he was scared. He even questioned if he trusted Wonwoo in that moment of debilitating fear. Once he saw that it was said boy, any fear melted away like snow in the spring, and he became giddy and bouncy, turning the eerie walk into a game of tag.

 

“Where were you, down the hill and all that? Looking for me?” Soonyoung asks, still trying to shake off his bewilderment.

 

“You wish. My uncle lives a few houses down, and he’s a bit sick, so I was visiting him,” Wonwoo answers.

 

“Oh. What’s he got?”

 

“I have no idea.” Wonwoo shrugs, and he looks generally uncomfortable with the conversation, wringing his hands together in that nervous way he does. Soonyoung remembers him talking about liking his uncle, so he’s tactful enough to know that it’s time to change the topic.

 

“Well, I hope he gets well soon,” Soonyoung crosses his fingers and raises them to his face as he says so.

 

The frogs croak, a quick chorus that dies out within a few seconds, loud because the frogs and tadpoles are thriving in the rivers and ponds at this time of year. And loud because it’s so quiet you could probably hear a tree falling, with Soonyoung and Wonwoo ambling slowly towards Wonwoo’s house in utter silence. Shoulders brushing, footsteps light on the bed of wet pine needles covering the road year-round.

 

When they pass by the gates that bar the dogs from the world, they stick their muzzles through the gaps, growling and sniffing. Wonwoo subtly quickens his pace and drifts towards the opposite edge of the road, but not subtly enough not to catch Soonyoung’s watchful eye.

 

“I was thinking…” Soonyoung begins.

 

“You do that a lot?” Wonwoo snaps back, laughing at his own joke. He gets snarkier when he’s feeling threatened or uncomfortable.

 

“You have issues.”

 

Wonwoo sounds playful now. “Tell me something I don’t know, Soonyoung.”

 

“ _Anyway_. Have you ever considered letting them loose once and for all?” He’s wondering if Wonwoo ever _would_ let them loose on the village, but he’s also wondering from a humanitarian perspective- he’s always felt bad for the dogs.

 

“Of course I have, and I’ve told you that plenty of times. You think I like keeping them locked year-round? It makes me feel as abusive and awful as… he… was. But they’re still vicious and I don’t want to be the reason they get shot and killed by riled-up villagers, or the reason villagers get chunks bitten off their arms.”

 

“I thought you hated the villagers?”

 

“Does that have to mean I particularly want them dead or injured?”

 

“No. I guess I get it. It’s kind of a double-edged sword, huh? You keep them in, you’re evil, you let them out, they’ll probably get killed.” He leans against the wall as Wonwoo digs through his pockets for his house-keys, amusing himself by watching the cloudy white plumes of breath rising every time he exhales. So he puffs air out until his lungs feel sore.

 

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, that’s how it’s been all my life.” Wonwoo chuckles, not even bitterly. Just loud and clear, chorusing like the frogs did earlier, as though it’s actually funny.

 

“I swear they’re not vicious anymore,” Soonyoung presses, but then he looks confused, because the conflicting image of them chasing him and mauling him from earlier is replaying in his head. It was just his imagination playing tricks in the dark and trying to terrify him, he concludes, but even he's not sure.

 

“They just growled at me, and you’re telling me they aren’t vicious?”

 

He shifts and squirms, his fingers grasping the insides of his jacket pockets as he grasps for straws and answers. “I mean… they’re timid around everyone _but_ you. I really don’t think they’d hurt you… they’re your dogs in the end, but I’m just saying.”

 

“ _I get it._ I know. I almost let them out at some point last year, when I was drunk and in one of my weird moods- which, consider this a warning, I go into sometimes.”

 

Soonyoung nods. He hasn’t had much experience dealing with drunk people, and it isn’t even a guarantee that he’ll be around when Wonwoo is “in one of his moods”. Considering the amount of time he’s been spending around him so far this year, though, it seems more likely than not that he will be around when it happens. He’s stronger than Wonwoo, and he seems to have a soothing, positive effect on him, so all things considered, he thinks he can handle it. “Okay. Consider me warned.”

 

“So what’s the final decision? Keep them in?” Soonyoung gestures behind him, in the general direction of the car garage and the doghouses and front gates. He rises up and steps inside, sliding his shoes off quickly.

 

Once he’s sitting on the couch in the living room, near the dormant, empty fireplace, he answers. “Is there any other option? What do you think I should do?”

 

“Do you think I could train them, or get them to go away from this entire area for good? Like, y’know, a dog whisperer?”

 

“ _Like a dog whisperer_?” Wonwoo echoes, scoffing. “I think you’re onto something with your persistence and enthusiasm, though.”

 

“And what’s that?” Soonyoung leans against the gilded marble mantelpiece, which bears snow-globes and poetry books and a pure-gold gun (the magazine is empty), propped up and on display like an art-piece would be in a more normal home. It’s probably a remnant from his father’s reign over the household, and the former two things are likely ones that Wonwoo has chosen as decoration.

 

“Give me a minute of silence. I’m making up my mind.” He holds his skinny index finger up to indicate on minute of silence, or maybe a request for it, and Soonyoung complies. Wonwoo stays sitting on the couch and his finger stays up for the entire minute, giving the impression of being so invested in his thoughts that he forgot to lower his finger. He stares at a patch on the table, but his eyes are glassy. When the minute is up, he rises off the couch and leaves the room.

 

“Thanks for nothing,” Soonyoung rolls his eyes and grins. He isn’t upset, and the exasperation he feels is affectionate. Like putting on a show in front of a crowd of people when something is _supposed_ to be off-putting or exasperating, but inside, you’re actually endeared by it and attracted to it. The only person he’s putting on a show of exasperation for is himself, though.

 

Wonwoo returns with something small cupped in his hand. He puts what turns out to be a pair of rather large silver keys in Soonyoung’s hands. “They’re the keys to the dog gates, if that isn’t obvious already. I trust you more than I trust myself, and I think whatever decision you take in the end will be better than whatever I’ll end up doing in a fit of anger in the future.”

 

He gapes, closes his mouth, and gapes again, but he pockets the keys. His mother didn’t trust him with money for most of his childhood because he had nimble fingers and a knack for pickpocketing and stealing, his sisters didn’t trust him with their high school crushes’ names because they “knew he would blow it for them somehow”, and his teachers didn’t trust him to take things seriously and actually study for his midterm exams. But here was Wonwoo, trusting him with something life-affecting and important, without so much as batting an eyelash. “Really?”

 

“Absolutely.” Wonwoo collapses back into the couch, too careless and content with his decision to drag the topic out further, instead dragging Soonyoung down by the hand. Soonyoung falls almost on him, catching himself and rolling into the space next to him just in time. “There are more pressing things to debate.”

 

Soonyoung tucks the keys into his hoodie pocket. “Like why you bit me earlier?”

 

“Like why I bit you earlier,” Wonwoo echoes, nodding. “I want permission to bite you whenever I want,” he continues, smiling to bare his pretty, sharp teeth.

 

 

Later that night, once Wonwoo has fallen asleep and Soonyoung is sitting in his usual perch by the windowsill, he digs the keys out of his sweatshirt pocket and holds them out in the moonlight. They glint and sparkle.

 

Holding them out in his hands, he thinks about that brief moment where he doubted his trust in Wonwoo and his trust in the dogs being timid and non-aggressive nowadays. He regrets it, but there’s still a nagging feeling that’s making him think of why he felt that way.

 

Wonwoo’s childhood was plagued with the dogs baying and fighting and being treated cruelly under his bedroom window. The sound of their chains dragging and catching on the gravel was background noise for most of his time spent in his bedroom. Soonyoung wonders if his father chose to put the dogs right under his window as a form of psychological abuse, considering he was vindictive and he trained them to be vicious just to make the villagers suffer, after all. He gathers, from the way Wonwoo tip-toes around it but implies it, that most of his father’s abuse was verbal and psychological anyhow, through lies and negligence and abuse of power.

 

He peers over so his forehead is pressed into the cold glass, and looks down. The dogs are circling their allotted area restlessly, their glossy pelts catching in the moonlight the same way the keys in his hands do. Soonyoung’s mind strays to the edge of morbidity, where he sadly envisions what his father did to these dogs to turn them into bloodthirsty terrors in the past. He didn’t think he’d meet someone who was a victim and a witness to such horrible acts like Wonwoo, and suddenly, his heart is sore. For the dogs and Wonwoo- and that’s what conflicts him most.

 

He feels Wonwoo. The fear he felt earlier made him realize how much he understands his current situation. But he also desperately wants to use all that he’s capable of to free the dogs and give them a better life than they’ve had so far. Those two lines can’t intersect, so they conflict instead, and they leave Soonyoung torn in half.

 

And he’s overwhelmed by Wonwoo’s absolute, unquestioning trust in him of all people, thieving and nimble-fingered and bitterly poor as he was when he was young. He supposes he’s changed, and Wonwoo trusts who he is nowadays, not whoever he was when he was younger, so he should stop doubting himself. He’s overwhelmed by how Wonwoo put the decision in his hands (the decision is silver and spindly and it feels cold against his warm palms).

 

Soonyoung looks back at him, curled serenely under a mound of blankets. He has no idea what part of him appeals to Wonwoo, leading to him being his only close friend, leading to him placing a decision in his hands that could go horribly right or horribly wrong depending on what Soonyoung thinks is the better option.

 

His heart is sore now that he’s thought of it all, and on the windowsill in the moon’s waning light, he pockets the keys and leans his head back, eyes closed.

 

 

As the change of seasons settles for good, the trees getting leafier and the seeds they’d planted in the fields beginning to send out tiny green shoots, the snow and sleet replaced with fog and rain, the back of Soonyoung’s brain is filling with little things, so much that it makes him dizzy and warm. It’s like opening every drawer in a tall cabinet and finding them all full to overflowing point, full of small notes and letters preserving pictures and memories. Silly little things that need gentle observation to be noticed, habits and mannerisms of Wonwoo’s that he picks up on and pockets away in that same part of his brain that kept that memory of the riverbank and the black-haired boy. The dusty-old-bookshelf part, where he coincidentally seems to store all his memories and thoughts of Wonwoo.

 

That part of his brain, in fact, is solely and entirely dedicated to Wonwoo, because anything else that was kept in there has been swept off the shelves and into oblivion to make room.

 

Wonwoo licks the spoon like it’s a lollipop after stirring honey into their tea. Wonwoo washes his hands with the ice-cold tap water, and instead of drying them off on a towel and warming them up by the fire, he finds Soonyoung and slips his hands under his shirt to trail cold wetness down his hot back and make him yelp and kick. Wonwoo writes his favourite quotes from books he’s reading on post-it notes and tacks them onto the fridge. Wonwoo gets ridiculously irritated when the lenses of his glasses have a particle of dirt, and he won’t settle until he cleans them- and when Soonyoung is trying to tease Wonwoo, he swipes his finger onto the lens to leave a long smudge. Wonwoo likes cats, but no village cat will ever wander near his house for him to pet, as long as the dogs are around to scare them off. Wonwoo still forgets how to sleep sometimes, and he asks Soonyoung to remind him how it’s done.

 

Soonyoung is drowning in all of his love for every little thing Wonwoo does, and he’s frantic about storing it all, remembering it forever. He feels like he’s drowning, but not in a bad way; this isn’t a cold, gushing river, this is like drowning in sugar and honey. He’s succumbed to Wonwoo, so he’s not going to fight it anymore. He can feel himself sinking a few feet farther down every time he thinks of him, and as far as Soonyoung knows, drowning in love is ridiculously, giddily pleasant.

 

 

“ _Psst_. Soonyoung. Are you awake?” Wonwoo’s voice is hushed.

 

Soonyoung _is_ awake now, but he stays still, listening to hear if the dogs are barking. No, the night is dead quiet. Is Wonwoo just pulling his leg and messing with him like he sometimes does? Or can he really not sleep right now?

 

He raises his head a few inches off of his pillow, and he sees Wonwoo’s face outlined against the dark shadows behind it. His head is peeking over the edge of his bed, and he’s staring right down at his sleeping figure on the floor. Soonyoung squints to try and make out more, but his eyes are still bleary and it’s still too dark. After he takes his fine time and finally decides to make it known that he’s awake, he answers. “What?”

 

“Come up here.” Wonwoo slides back and pats the spot where he was sitting fervently, until Soonyoung lifts himself up and crawls two feet closer and up onto the bed. He stays sitting up, even though his sleepy body feels like it can barely hold itself, and he yawns, because the room doesn’t feel so cozy when he’s not nestled and weighed down by body-warmed blankets.

 

“What for? If you made me leave my warm bed for-”

 

Wonwoo pulls Soonyoung closer by the neck of his sweater. He wraps his arms around him, and then maneuvers him into an even more easily-accessible spot, so he’s almost sitting _in_ Wonwoo’s lap. Soonyoung doesn’t resist, nor does he have it in him to. “I wanted a hug, stupid. And a hug will warm you up, right?”

 

He wants to be angry, he really does. But he can’t if he tries. Wonwoo smells like fabric softener, and his body is ridiculously warm, such that the smell combined with the warmth feels like he’s hugging a pile of clothes fresh out of the dryer. Soonyoung can’t help but smile, and he’s still so sleepy that it almost feels like one of those dreams where nothing can go wrong. His hands had automatically settled around Wonwoo when he’d heard the word “hug”, but now he tightened his grip and reciprocated it. Soonyoung has always been the best at giving hugs, and that’s yet another among the countless virtues he doesn’t see in himself. That’s why Wonwoo craves his hugs so much.

 

This is a special kind of intimacy (a warm hug on a cold midnight in a dark, empty room) and it sends giddy heat shooting through his body from his fingertips to his toes, warming him like nothing else he knows.

 

“You woke up, and then woke me up, because you were itching for a hug?” Soonyoung asks, incredulous.

 

“No, I woke up because one of the dogs barked earlier,” Wonwoo answers, his sharp chin still digging deep into Soonyoung’s shoulder. “And I woke you up because I wanted you.”

 

Soonyoung chuckles weakly. _I wanted you._ The words echo and bounce around in his head, making him dizzy. “Wonwoo,” Soonyoung says, his voice a little firmer than he intended for it to be.

 

Wonwoo peels away from his shoulder and faces him, looking apprehensive as he waits for Soonyoung to talk. He’s in a dream-like state right now, unable to distinguish the seemingly paper-thin, quivering lines separating imagination and dreams and reality. Anything past midnight feels surreal, and so Soonyoung is acting on his feelings instead of stifling them, because why not, if he’s not even sure he’s actually awake right now?

 

He nestles his hands into Wonwoo’s hair, a soft black nest sticking out in tufts and curls, getting a gentle grip on his head so he can tilt it down and kiss his high forehead. “For you, anything,” he says. He doesn’t know how it’ll be interpreted and what it exactly means at this point in time and in their relationship, but he could never regret doing it. Now’s as good a time as any to say it, and he means what he says.

 

Wonwoo’s eyes are dazed and sparkling. He’s breathless and the words have been completely knocked out of him, by such a simple action, no less. He settles for smoothing stray locks of hair out of Soonyoung’s face, and the two sit there in silence, both of them so close to sleep that their eyes drift closed every few seconds.

 

“Lie down with me,” Wonwoo mumbles, opening his blankets for Soonyoung to move under. He does so, readily. Although Wonwoo has mounds of goose-down pillows, they share one, so their foreheads almost touch if they lie facing each other.

 

The inside of the blankets is a pocket of preserved heat, and he can feel a magnetic tug trying to pull him closer to the source of the heat. The source being the skinny, stretched-out body lying so close to him, and radiating waves of sweet warmth. He can’t resist- he’s far too weak and dazed and sleepy. He shifts closer, reaching out and tugging at Wonwoo’s waist to pull his body towards him as well.

 

And now they’re lying on their sides, foreheads pressed together. In this moment, Soonyoung’s senses are alive and it’s painful, they’re burning, they’re eating him alive. Wonwoo is as close as ever, and Soonyoung still itches for more. His ears are red, his eyelids are scorching against his eyes, and the blood running through his body is liquefied fire. He’s lying there stiffly, but he feels like any minute, he’ll crackle and pop and explode like a fire. His fingertips might be smoking. He bunches up the fabric of Wonwoo’s shirt in his hands, gripping it in his fists, and Wonwoo’s hand is settled against his soft stomach.

 

Wonwoo crawls closer still, and a lump develops in Soonyoung’s throat, but it melts and smolders when he gulps it back down. Wonwoo’s breathing slows even further just as Soonyoung’s hitches, and Wonwoo, maybe subconsciously, tucks his head into Soonyoung’s neck.

 

“You know what I… what I love?” Wonwoo mumbles, his voice so far-away sounding, as though he’s mostly sleep talking and only hardly awake. It sounds like his voice is floating over from an island across and under an ocean, mumbles and murmurs that are almost unintelligible to Soonyoung’s ear.

 

“Hmm?”

 

“I’m happy.” Wonwoo stops, and sighs, and burrows his head even further into Soonyoung, burying his nose in his warm, fragrant skin. “I love it when I can feel you next to me.”

 

“I love it, too,” Soonyoung answers, craning his neck to look down at Wonwoo’s small, curled-in figure all cuddled up and pressed against him.

 

“I love it when I’m not alone in an empty house.” Soonyoung’s heart aches. “I love it when I’m not alone,” Wonwoo repeats, and now he can feel his heart beating shallowly, which tells him that Wonwoo’s fallen asleep wrapped in his arms.

 

 

The blinds had been left open, and pale sunlight bathes the entire room. Soonyoung wakes slowly, at his own pace, without a mother to shake him awake or an alarm clock reminding him of the long day he has to wake early to greet. As soon as his senses surface, he becomes aware of the heaviness of arms and a head still splayed over his chest.

 

When he opens his eyes (and then closes them again because the sunlight is too bright and it burns) and then opens them properly, he sees that Wonwoo is still asleep, using Soonyoung’s ribcage as a pillow.

 

Soonyoung shifts into a more comfortable position, and checks the time. It reads eight-thirty, and he thinks he still has plenty of time to lounge around with Wonwoo even after breakfast, before he has to go home. He begins to run his fingers through Wonwoo’s hair, clearing it away from his face and smoothing it down.

 

Wonwoo stirs and groans, stretching his arms out across Soonyoung’s stomach, flexing his fingers until the tips arch upwards, and when he opens his eyes, he’s unsurprised by the way he’s lying dangerously, intimately on top of Soonyoung. He stifles a yawn when he meets Soonyoung’s gaze and smiles lazily.

 

“Mornin’,” Soonyoung says. “Sleep well?”

 

Wonwoo scoffs in response, but now that he’s fully awake, he unhooks his arms from Soonyoung’s waist and moves up so his head is on the pillow and a few inches away from Soonyoung’s face. Wonwoo’s actions oppose his feelings; he already misses the gut-wrenching closeness that he feels when he hugs him. He misses hearing his heartbeat quicken and slow, wax and wane, ebb and flow, when he had pressed his ear against the sweater covering his chest.

 

The birds squeak and sing airy morning songs that curl into Wonwoo’s bedroom on the cold breeze blowing in, and every once in a while, a sparrow or red-breast lands on the windowsill and pecks around. Birds swoop past the square window, and Wonwoo’s room doesn’t feel like a room at all. It feels like they’re out there with the birds, because he can smell the sharp, minty smell of dewy plants drying in the sun, and he can feel the wind and sun as though he’s out on a rooftop. “Can you feel that spring’s here?”

 

“I can feel it in my bones. Can you smell it?” Soonyoung can feel the clean white sunlight, like the sun was reborn brighter and gentler after being hidden behind clouds all winter, and he can feel a low hum of energy running through his body. Every spring, his body buzzes with a new strength, resurrected after a harsh, cruel season, and this year his feelings are ten times stronger.

 

“It smells fresh and alive. I can hardly wait for all of the wildflowers to blossom,” Wonwoo mumbles happily. “The sun’s so bright, though.”

 

“I’ll get up and close the blinds, if you want,” Soonyoung offers. His voice, usually flowing out warm and loose, is choppy and carefully enunciated, which is a tell-tale sign that he’s feeling shy, or awkward, or embarrassed. He feels all three, as he’s deeply missing the closeness to Wonwoo, wondering if Wonwoo feels the same, and also questioning if it’ll affect their friendship if they spent the night curled in each other’s arms.

 

“Don’t. Just stay.”

 

Soonyoung does, and Wonwoo runs his hand over his arm, touch as light as the birds on the windowsill, as fluttery and fleeting as their feathered wings when they take off. He really doesn’t know what to make of all of this dangerous, criminal intimacy, and most importantly if Wonwoo realizes how thin the lines are becoming between friendship and something else. What he knows is that he wouldn’t complain if he got to spend every morning like this.

 

 

Spring advancing into full bloom is signified by marginally warmer days peppered with rain and shine, meadows speckled with leafy weeds and wildflowers, and more chores than any other time of year for Soonyoung. In the fall, he takes it upon himself to chop all of their firewood; his father still insists on it, but his doctor and Soonyoung and his mother push him back into his chair and remind him of his aching joints and brittle bones. In the winter, he shovels snow and carries baskets of wood inside and mans the wood-stove, but all of it pales in comparison to the hefty labour of mid-to-late spring.

 

At this point, these months just remind him of beads of sweat glistening on his temples, the green stain of vegetable leaves from days of picking them, and the earthy smell of the burlap sacks they get tossed into once picked. It’s tedious, but like plowing and planting the field for summer crops last month, it’s monotonous and routine, which makes it easier for his mind to stray into other realms while his hands work on autopilot.

 

He used to wish his family’s main livelihood wasn’t farming. It was the same age where no one trusted him and he was bitter about being poor and from a small rural place. Now, Soonyoung thinks he wouldn’t have half his fondest memories if this weren’t his family’s main source of income. He remembers lying on the top of the sky-high pile of rolled wheat, the result of a day’s work under the back-burning sun, and the feeling of an evening breeze blowing his sticky hair from his face.

 

The dirt is soft and crumbly under his feet, providing a satisfying sensation when he presses into the ground and feels them sink a few inches down. Today he was happy to wake up when his mother dragged him out of bed and down to the fields, and he still smiles when he sees his mother walking over from where she stood with his father across the field.

 

“If you and dad are too old and weak to handle this, I can do the rest of the field myself,” Soonyoung calls out, because he has the kind of relationship where he can tease her for being a slow-poke and expect a slap on the neck in return.

 

“Me? I gave birth to _you_. Anything else is easy in comparison,” she retorts, and this is where it hits him that he gets this mischievous playfulness from her. His father’s gruffer and more silent, but with his mom, joking and poking around comes easy, and it’s a big part of how they bond together.

 

“Ouch.” He grins and throws the head of dark green lettuce into a bag, bending down to hack another out of the earth with his tiny knife.

 

She’s watching him pick the greens and bag them with that fondness in her eye, at its core the same look Wonwoo gives him, but it’s motherly and tender, whereas Wonwoo’s look is a dangerously different kind of intimate. “You’ve been sleeping well again?”

 

Soonyoung drops the handful of arugula bunched in his fist, watching the damp leaves scatter in the mud, and catches himself before he shows too much of a reaction to her words. “How’d you… notice I wasn’t sleeping well?”

 

“Mothers know everything,” she answers easily, unaware of his fumbling panic. “Dark circles under your eyes for months now, and now you’re finally back to being my bright little Soonyoung.”

 

If he’s that obvious, he needs to hide his tracks carefully and make sure all the love he has for Wonwoo doesn’t begin showing on his face. He gulps. “Don’t worry, it was just my, um, flu keeping me up,” he lies, hoping she’ll take the bait and drop the topic even though he’s sure she knows he’s bluffing.

 

She does, thankfully. “Anyway, your dad and I have been talking,” those words bring his mind to focus, instead of where he was off in a Wonwoo-related daydream, “and we appreciate your help around the house. You’ve really picked up the slack lately.”

 

“Yeah, it’s no problem?” Soonyoung’s voice tilts up questioningly. He knows she’s buffering some bad news she’s going to break to him any minute now. Coincidentally, the wind is whipping the clouds above them and they’re rumbling and threatening to drench them in cold rain.

 

“But we _really_ think you should get a job. Like your sisters, to support our family since your dad’s retired and you’re still young and healthy.”

 

 

He bangs his head a little too hard on Wonwoo’s honey-coloured kitchen table. Grimacing but keeping his forehead firmly pressed into the wood, he stares at what he can see of his legs and socks tucked next to the legs of the table. “They want me to get a job, Wonwoo.”

 

“They?” Wonwoo is by the stove, trying to make a quick dinner. He twists the skillet around, expecting the egg to be done, but it drips and the yolk runs, ruining the sunny-side-up appearance. He finds a spatula in the drawer and hastily tries to cover up his mistake by turning what was once supposed to be a pair of fried eggs into messy scrambled ones. Soonyoung notices it all, because his eyes can’t not watch Wonwoo when he’s around him, but he’s too invested in his little follies to make fun of his cooking right now.

 

 “You hungry?” He had asked once they had gone into the kitchen earlier and he caught Soonyoung’s eyes landing on the jar of fig preserves on the countertop, left out from breakfast.

 

“I’ve been out farming _all_ day,” Soonyoung had whined, sliding a chair out and melting into it. “I’m starving.”

 

“Do you mind eggs for dinner?”

 

“I’ll eat anything at this point.”

 

Presently, Wonwoo is splitting the butter-yellow scrambled eggs into two different bowls that are balanced on the stovetop griddle, and Soonyoung still has his face pressed into the table. “Who are “they”?” Wonwoo repeats as he unwraps the paper bag containing half a baguette.

 

“Parents. Mom’n’Dad.”

 

Wonwoo begins cutting the baguette into skinny slices, brandishing the bread-knife around. “Ah. I forgot that such a thing existed.”

 

“Wonwoo! You’re not helping me! I don’t wanna get a job!” Soonyoung lifts his head up off of the table and stretches his hand out, laying it flat over the remaining uncut bread. Wonwoo tilts his head and gives him a questioning look.

 

“Chop my hand off. Maybe then my parents will lay off and let me laze around and be a kid in peace,” Soonyoung huffs, flexing his fingers over the crumbly, flour-coated crust.

 

“Melodramatic much?” Wonwoo scoffs and slides his limp hand off of the bread so it thumps onto the table dejectedly. He opens his mouth to show Soonyoung that he should do the same, and corks him by shoving a piece of baguette into it. “Do you want to borrow money from me?”

 

“ _No,”_ Soonyoung says, muffled around his bite of food. “Anyway, I shouldn’t be complaining to you, because you’ve got nothing to do with it.” What can Wonwoo do for him? It’s pointless to expect Wonwoo to offer him advice as someone who hasn’t worked a day in his life, and as someone who is exiled from the village below, therefore having no connections to help Soonyoung get this job.

 

“Hmm. Let me think. I remember my uncle’s bakery needed workers a few months back,” Wonwoo muses, licking runny yolk off of his finger. Soonyoung is mesmerized by this, and Wonwoo gives him a pointedly dirty look for doing so, which makes him hide his face in the table again, red and embarrassed. “I’m sure we can squeeze a job out for you.”

 

“I’ve never touched a cookbook in my life, though,” Soonyoung says, too far into his self-pitying slump to resurface back into his usual cheerfulness. Not just yet. He’s had his bottom lip (his pretty pomegranate lips) sticking out and trembling, and his eyes are downcast and sad.

 

“So you don’t have any cooking or baking experience?”

 

“Uh, no.”

 

Wonwoo winks at him. “I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end.” 

 

“See, I’m hopeless!”

 

“Soonyoung, work with me here. I’m trying to help.” Wonwoo eyes Soonyoung’s plate of eggs, and then looks up at him. And then back at the eggs. Silent but commanding. _Eat_.

 

Soonyoung needs to get a grip. He’s here to complain about being an adult whose parents, like most others, expect him to begin helping provide for the family instead of hanging around like the deadweight he probably is. He needs to get over himself. Especially when Wonwoo’s here with much heavier problems, but he’s trying to accommodate Soonyoung anyway.

 

“Right. Right. I’m sorry. I’ll just shut up and eat.” Soonyoung picks up his fork and begins to eat quietly, but he doesn’t notice the silence from Wonwoo’s side of the table as he scarfs down too much food too fast.

 

Wonwoo is watching him, worried about his abnormally blue mood, even though he knows he’ll bounce back within a few days and it’s just a brief issue plaguing him. But he’s worried, and he doesn’t think Soonyoung’s struggle is fickle or stupid like he thinks it is, because that’s what people who are in deep love do; they help each other through thick and thin, and they look out for each other no matter the situation.

 

Whether his worries are something like drowning in millions of dollars of debt (which is generally considered a heavier struggle) or losing his favourite sweater (which is generally, comparatively, considered a lesser one), Wonwoo is his shoulder to lean on.

 

It operates in reverse, because whether Wonwoo has deep-rooted issues he needs to work through or whether he’s healthy and whole, and if he’s outcast by an entire town or if he’s the most coveted man in the country, Soonyoung is going to love and nurture and help him all the same.

 

 

Two weeks later, Soonyoung is struggling to tie his work apron. It’s very early in the morning, so the sun hasn’t had time to burn the droplets of condensation off of the storefront glass. Soonyoung’s nose is runny and red from breathing in the cold air. All he can think of is how much he owes Wonwoo for getting him a job at his uncle’s bakery, and doing it as discreetly as possible as well (such that no one suspected that the two knew each other).

 

He’s thankful that his parents wake up later these days, so he can still spend his nights at Wonwoo’s and sneak back into the house at sunrise and pretend he was asleep in his room all along. He thinks of this as he rubs his eyes and yawns, stretching his arms over his head before beginning to move the cooling trays into the backroom.

 

They were overjoyed that he found a job so quickly, and so close to the house, and that joy clouded and blew away any doubts they would’ve had about the nature of the job and the fact that it was the spy’s brother’s bakery.

 

The building is situated directly in the heart of the town, and the town circle (a circular bush wrapping around a fountain statue of an old Roman emperor whose mouth gurgles out icy water) is going to be Soonyoung’s view for his entire shift. He’ll get to watch the few locals’ cars and some school-buses curve around the circle all day long, and greet the old ladies who walk down here every morning to shop at the grocer’s a few stores down.

 

He thinks it’s funny that such a serene, idyllic village could be so unlikeable, and so remarkably cruel to Wonwoo. He understands their sentiments and bitterness towards his father, but Wonwoo? They cut him off before he could even prove his harmlessness.

 

Soonyoung’s job has nothing to do with the baking or frosting or decorating, and for that he is glad. Wonwoo seemed to understand that the only thing he could _never_ be trusted with was an oven and a cabinet full of baking ingredients. All he has to do is smile and greet the customers, and sit in the chair by the register until noon.

 

When Soonyoung has his back turned to the door, almost childishly interested in clicking all the keys on the cash register pad, someone comes in. Silently, but never silently enough in an empty shop in a still-sleeping village. So Soonyoung turns and finds Wonwoo, huddled in a coat and a beanie, giving him the fondest, softest smile.

 

“Why’re you here? Isn’t someone going to see you?” Soonyoung hisses.

 

“I was out visiting my uncle. His condition’s getting worse,” Wonwoo answers, his smile fading only slightly before it bounces back. “But I figured no one would notice me coming downtown for just a few minutes.” He looks over both shoulders and out the window, and as expected, the place is a deserted ghost town for the time being.

 

“But… there’s nothing to buy yet,” Soonyoung says dumbly, gesturing at the empty racks and trays and refrigerated display cases.

 

“You really think I walked down here, on _your_ first day of work coincidentally, because I was craving a muffin?” Wonwoo scoffs and folds his arms, exasperated because Soonyoung just doesn’t get it. He came down to see _him_ in his funny apron, to greet him and watch him fumble around the place.

 

“Okay. I get it. So you came down to check me out?” Soonyoung raises his eyebrows and bats his eyes.

 

“ _Stop_.”

 

 

Two weeks after that, Soonyoung is walking to work under a high, clear sky. When he reaches the bakery, he finds that the shutters have been pulled down and the windows boarded up. There’s a small notice tacked onto one of the boards, a paper fluttering in the warm wind that he has to hold down to read.

 

It reads that Wonwoo’s uncle has passed away, and as a result, the bakery will be closed indefinitely- or at least until his will is disclosed and the bakery is inherited.

 

Soonyoung doesn’t feel anything necessarily, because he didn’t know the man and he can’t say no to a few days off of work. He’s aware that it seems callous, but in his mind, it’s a thousand times better than the old ladies who didn’t know the man either but will definitely flock to his funeral just because it’s an event in such a close-knit community.

 

He wonders about Wonwoo, though. All he remembers him mentioning is that he liked his uncle, and he obviously remembers him paying frequent visits lately due to his illness. He’s worried, and a part of him wants to run to the top of the hill just to make sure he’s okay, but he’s torn. That part tugs at him, but another part knows that staying back and giving space is probably wiser. Who is he to Wonwoo anyway when it comes to these kinds of things?

 

He stands there, mulling it over in his mind, still holding onto a corner of the notice. Once he does, he walks straight back to his house, where he informs his mother (who informs him that she already knew, as it was the talk of the village this morning) and eats a late breakfast in silence. He can hear snippets of his parents discussing the details and whether or not they should attend the funeral in the other room.

 

“We didn’t know him at all-”

 

“The traitor’s brother-”

 

“But I think it’s better to pay our respects-”

 

They come in and out of focus, as though his mind is struggling to decide whether to listen in or shut it out. He chews on his oatmeal, amazed at how bland and soggy it tastes this morning, and wonders again how Wonwoo is doing. If the funeral is happening this afternoon- he learned that through the few words he caught from his parents’ conversation- then Wonwoo would be there.

 

While he rinses his plate in the sink and washes his hands in lukewarm water, he thinks about it, drowning out his parents’ voices deliberately now. He knows exactly where the cemetery is, and while he still refuses to attend the funeral, he may be able to slink around in the woods the cemetery borders and see if Wonwoo looks alright.

 

 

 

Soonyoung’s antics begin reminding him of his youth, how he used to crawl around on the forest floor and muddy up the knees and elbows of his clothes for the sake of an intense game. He still retains a lot of that boyishness in the sense that his knees are still always scraped and bruised and his hands never aren’t calloused and rough. Right now, he’s sitting high in an old oak and hugging one of the branches so closely that all he can smell is dew and moss and raw wood.

 

He waits silently, and as expected, once he sees a stream of sleek cars following a hearse towards the cemetery gates, he suddenly develops an itch just where he can’t reach without falling out of his perch. He resists the temptation and grits his teeth, watching the people climbing out of the expensive luxury cars. He assumes they’re direct relatives, not only judging by the expensive car that no other villager would dream of driving, but by a familiarly sharp, austere look to all of them.

 

Soonyoung pulls a branch from obstructing his view and searches for Wonwoo’s face. He finds him almost immediately. He’s dressed in black and holding bouquets of white lilies, and his eyes are bright, but he doesn’t look like he’s particularly disturbed. Actually, he doesn’t look like he’s feeling anything. He files towards the dug-up plot where the deceased will be buried, stepping deliberately onto the mounds of red soil surrounding the hole.

 

Now he’s closer for Soonyoung to watch. Throughout the burial (carrying the coffin through, burying it, covering it with dirt) he’s calm and composed and expressionless. Soonyoung has no idea how he has so much self-control. While he doesn’t think he’d necessarily be emotional- he can control his tears well enough- his face would twitch and frown and he’d maybe even smile inappropriately. But Wonwoo’s stays serene and unperturbed.

 

When the top of the dirt is being patted down and everyone has set their lilies over the remains of Wonwoo’s uncle, the throng of villagers begins to disperse and stray back towards the long line of parked cars. The relatives remain, some sobbing silently. Wonwoo breaks away from them, and to Soonyoung’s horror, beelines straight in his direction.

 

But he was perfectly camouflaged in the tree? How could Wonwoo have noticed him? Soonyoung had been watching him all this time, and his eyes never even looked up for long enough to hypothetically spot Soonyoung.

 

He’s standing under the tree, craning his neck to look up at Soonyoung. “You came here to watch the funeral?”

 

“No! I came here to check on you!” Soonyoung is indignant and bashful, ears red and arms crossed.

 

“You could have just… knocked on my door earlier. You’re so strange,” Wonwoo says. “Can you come down?”

 

“I don’t wanna.”

 

“So you’re stuck up there, huh?” Wonwoo asks, smiling softly.

 

He knows how to push Soonyoung’s buttons to get him to forget about his stubbornness and do as he wants. Soonyoung scrambles and leaps off the tree, landing in a crouch next to Wonwoo. He rises up and dusts the crumbles of tree bark off of his shirt. “ _Not stuck_.”

 

Wonwoo’s in a tuxedo and his hair, usually long and shaggy and loose, is combed and slicked back out of his face. Soonyoung thinks he prefers Wonwoo in a sweatshirt, with his bedhead pressed against his chest. He looks back at Wonwoo’s relatives, all still clustered around the grave. “Isn’t your family gonna see us here?”

 

He shrugs. “No. They’re preoccupied, obviously. Anyway, I want to leave. I’m sick of stuffy outfits and hiding out in a backroom because none of the visitors paying respects want to pay respects to the spy’s son.”

 

Soonyoung winces. “I know a route through here that gets you up by your house. It’s a bit of a hike, and kind of long to walk, but we can get home before sunset and without anyone seeing us. You game?”

 

Wonwoo nods gratefully. Soonyoung begins to walk and he follows him, all but ripping the little black bow-tie off of his shirt collar and shoving it into his blazer pocket as he does so.

 

The walk is through an uncharted, unofficial path forged only by Soonyoung, one that he’s used to discreetly get around the village for years now.  They’re basically walking through the forest and relying on Soonyoung’s memory to lead them on the right path back home. Above them, the trees creak and sway and swish gently.

 

“They got a lawyer to read the will earlier,” he says.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. I inherited the bakery, a car, and a lot of money I don’t want or need,” Wonwoo says, sounding utterly bored. He unbuttons the top three buttons on his dress shirt. Soonyoung watches his fingers work them open and bites his tongue and looks away, pretending he didn’t, even though the image is still seared into his mind as he stares at the tree in front of him instead.

 

“What’re you going to do with those?”

 

“Upgrade your position at the bakery, first of all, because I can do that now and I’m going to abuse it. Who cares, and who can stop me? They’re all scared of me anyway.” His tone of voice and reckless, dangerous, stubborn attitude reminds Soonyoung starkly of the first time they spoke. “The other things, I don’t know, the car will rot in a lot and the money will rot in a bank.”

 

The pessimism, the dangerous edge rising in his voice, it reminds Soonyoung of the way Wonwoo used to be, before he warmed up and became gentle and playful and calm. It scares him a little, because it seems like a mood that rises when he’s either lonely or neglected, or when he remembers the times when he was. “Hey, Wonwoo.”

 

“Hey, Soonyoung. What is it?” Wonwoo tilts his head and shoves his shoulder into Soonyoung’s.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“That’s a loaded question.”

 

Soonyoung’s voice softens and lowers, even though it’s impossible that they’re in the presence of anyone or anything besides a few squirrels and crows. “Like. Are you feeling okay… after your uncle passed away? Is it affecting you a lot, or are you _o-kay_?”

 

“Oh, _that_ ,” Wonwoo jerks his head backwards, in the direction of the distant cemetery, “Yeah, I guess I’m okay.” He shrugs. He’s not used to emotions, he’s not used to facing them, only controlling them, and he’s not used to someone who cares. The entire funeral was just going through the motions, and not because of distress or sorrow, but just because he had no feelings in particular and he just wanted it over with. He wants to forget it happened, or pretend it didn’t, whatever, just jump the hurdle and get past it. He doesn’t really know, but he just wants to be alone with Soonyoung like before.

 

“’I guess’ isn’t the answer I was looking for,” Soonyoung presses, kicking a rock out of his way.

 

“It reminded me of my fa…”, he catches himself, “ _him_ dying. The issuing of the will and inheriting all this stupid expensive shit. I have four cars I will never use registered under my name now, actually,” he muses, straying off of his original point, “it’s kind of funny and sad.”

 

“Were you okay when he died?”

 

“I wanted to dance on his grave,” he blurts, and Soonyoung cracks an accidental smile, and then Wonwoo does too. “It ruined me a few months afterwards, though. It’s like I’ve got delayed emotions. I felt nothing when it happened, but it settled in slowly and I lost it later.”

 

Soonyoung doesn’t want to begin imagining what “lost it” implies. Imagining what happened last time isn’t the only thing that makes him anxious, it’s mostly the thought that it very well might happen again this time. Granted, it’s not his _father_ who just died, but he thinks the impact of the only positive older figure and the only negative figure in Wonwoo’s life dying might be the same on him. He might exhibit the same reaction, delayed emotions bubbling up and exploding randomly in a few months. After all, many victims of abuse are somehow so caught in the loop that they develop a strange sort of pleasure or obligation towards their abuser. And as it is, he’s currently telling Soonyoung how numb and unaffected he was last time in a very numb and unaffected way. “Delayed emotions, huh?”

 

“Yeah. So, what I was saying before is, I’m okay. _O-kay._ Really.”

 

Soonyoung stops walking, realizing that as stress took hold of his mind and his thoughts spiraled out of control, he had begun to hike too quickly and he’d wound himself up. He stops and breathes in the cooling afternoon air, watching Wonwoo, who is watching a pair of birds chase each other from treetop to treetop.

 

“Just tell me again. So I can believe it and leave you alone,” Soonyoung blurts, closing his eyes and holding a hand out towards Wonwoo.

 

His breathing has leveled, and his lungs are no longer burning, but his breath still hitches audibly when Wonwoo grabs hold of his hand and entwines his fingers in his. “I’m fine. Really. Don’t worry about me.”

 

 

Soonyoung wants to trust that Wonwoo won’t relapse into the same behavior as before. But a small part of him nags and worries.

 

He wants to trust that time and kindness heal everything, just like the dogs were healed after time away from his father and when they were treated kindly by Soonyoung. The pine trees lining the road up the hill to Wonwoo’s house- their roots were covered by asphalt, but over time, they’ve cracked through it and leave high ridges in the road now. He thinks, he hopes, Wonwoo will overturn his own suppression and crack through it in the same way.

 

In a way, he already has, but he doesn’t know it. Soonyoung has healed him somehow, because someone who used to be so quiet and emotionally suppressed has now risen to be talkative and free to do whatever he wants without the fear of judgment or prejudice or baggage on his shoulders. Because Soonyoung doesn’t have it in him to be that way, and it’s another innate virtue that’s stronger than anything else. That’s why Wonwoo feels so light and airy and free around him, because he can behave openly and express himself like no one ever allowed him the freedom of doing before.

 

 

“What are we doing, Soonyoung?”

 

“The hell if I know,” Soonyoung retorts, chuckling.

 

Wonwoo’s voice comes out in an exasperated drawl. “You’re the one that brought us here.”

 

“We’re picking fruit, I guess.”

 

“Is it even fruit season yet?”

 

“I mean, summer’s basically here, right?”

 

Soonyoung is very right in his declaration. The orchard, dry and brittle and dead-looking last time they were here, with trees that looked like twisted things out of a haunted forest, is in full bloom. Every tree is covered in heavenly green foliage, and most of the branches are heavy and drooping under the weight of various ripe fruits. As far as his eyes can see in any direction from where he stands in the very heart of the orchard, there’s a line of uniform trees stretching out ahead. It’s almost dizzying.

 

Wonwoo is carrying an empty wicker basket, and Soonyoung thinks this shows that he knew what they came here for all along. “And what do we do with all of this once we’ve picked it? These are acres and acres of giant fruit trees.”

 

He’s right. Soonyoung thinks for a minute, swatting fruit flies and loud, bumbling bees away from his face as he does. “I dunno. My mom makes jam, but I don’t know how to make that. We can try making non-grape fruit wine?”

 

“If you’re not qualified to make jam, I’m pretty sure you’re not qualified to make wine either.”

 

Soonyoung squints, partly because of the bright, blinding sunlight coming out from behind a cloud and partly because he’s dealing with a very scrutinizing Wonwoo. “Oh, _fine_. The fruit’ll rot either way, so just pick what we _can_ eat, how’s that?”

 

“That’s perfect,” Wonwoo says, smiling. So they pick a tree to start with- a pomegranate, Wonwoo’s favourite- and they race each other, creating a competition for who can pick the highest, reddest pomegranate first. Of course Soonyoung wins, and the few times Wonwoo does, he suspects it’s because Soonyoung held back and let him elbow him away from the branch and pick it off.

 

“Now that I think of it…” Wonwoo forgets about the sentence he’d started in his strenuous, sighing efforts to pick three juicy apricots at once. His fingers are sticky but so are his neck and face, and he only remembers to finish his sentence once he’s picked all three. “…isn’t your birthday coming up?”

 

Soonyoung stops, the branch he’s standing on swaying and creaking gently under his weight. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

 

Wonwoo shrugs. “I don’t know. I think you told me you were born in June once.”

 

“Well anyway, what about it?”

 

Wonwoo wipes the beads of sweat off of his forehead with the back of his hand, his eyebrows furrowed. “Do you want to celebrate your birthday at my house?”

 

Soonyoung makes Wonwoo wait for him to finish polishing an apricot by rubbing it with the fabric of his shirt, and then tossing it in his mouth. He chews, swallows, and replies. “I can’t imagine what Jeon Wonwoo’s idea of a birthday celebration is.”

 

“ _Hey!_ ” Soonyoung’s bare calves and knees are right at Wonwoo’s eye level, and he’s tip-toeing precariously on the edge of a particularly skinny branch in an attempt to reach a deeply-burrowed apricot. Wonwoo sets his skinny, spidery fingers on Soonyoung’s knees and expands them in one motion, knowing already that Soonyoung is irresistibly ticklish. His reaction is exactly as Wonwoo desires, yelping and kicking his hand away.

 

“I could’ve fallen and broken my neck and died!” Soonyoung moans dramatically.

 

“You think I wouldn’t catch you if you fell?”

 

“You can’t carry a basket without complaining that your arms hurt.”

 

Wonwoo lets a silence settle there, a silence in which he climbs the tree adjacent to Soonyoung’s and pelts him with apricots whenever he has his back turned to him. Wonwoo’s aim is quite bad and Soonyoung is deft at deflecting his hits, but he gets a good few bulls-eyes and more yelps and kicks and threats from Soonyoung.

 

“I have a cellar full of aged fruit wine. We can drink some of that because it’ll be fun. I can buy a good cake and gifts,” he says, in reference to the birthday topic. Both of them are suspended high above the ground, and Soonyoung is facing him a few feet away, his face only shrouded by the shadows patterned on his face.

 

“Aw, Wonwoo, y’know I was joking. I’d wanna spend my birthday with you even if you didn’t have any of those things.”

 

Wonwoo nods, and they both go back to their work, picking fruit until their arm muscles sore from being held above their heads for such long intervals. Their fingertips are sticky with fruit juice, dyed pink and red and green, and Soonyoung can tell that Wonwoo’s enjoying this much more than he is. Wonwoo seems to have a knack for all things related to nature, thoroughly enjoying the idea of farming and picking flowers and fruit and watering plants, in comparison to Soonyoung, who’s burned out on it and considers it a chore. No, that’s not true, because Soonyoung loves dangling from a tree and smelling the clean air and working under the harsh sun, but he views it as a chore and Wonwoo views it as a leisurely activity.

 

They only end up close enough together to talk again when they wind up standing together late in the afternoon, baskets teeming with pungent, almost too-soft fruit at their feet. They sit together, the dirt dry but soft underneath them. Wonwoo holds his hands out, and Soonyoung puts his hands in his, palms facing up.

 

“Soonyoung?”

 

He hums around his mouthful of mulberries in response.

 

“Won’t your parents notice your stained-up hands and ask where you’ve been?”

 

“No, because you see, I’ve always been like this. I spend most of my time out of the house and I only show up right before it’s late. I also used to steal fruit when I was little, so they’re used to that too.”

 

“You were quite the character,” Wonwoo responds fondly, a certain glimmer in his crinkled eyes. A glimmer that seems almost reserved for Soonyoung. “You still are.”

 

“Am I?” Soonyoung’s face moves closer to Wonwoo’s, so their nose-tips brush. They brush so softly that it almost feels ticklish. Soonyoung’s heart is bouncing around in his chest, and Wonwoo’s eyes are glimmering in the same way the distant blue ocean is under the sun. Soonyoung can see it on the horizon panning out behind Wonwoo’s face, and that’s how he compares it to his eyes. And there’s always a breeze in the orchard to sweep their hair out of their faces and to blame for the breathlessness Wonwoo is making him feel. A breeze that makes all the tree leaves rub against each other and create a long, gentle swish that travels like a whisper through the yard.

 

They’re criminally close, but it still doesn’t happen. Because the time isn’t right. Because they’re both counting on the other to make the move.

 

 

 _Pop_. The mottled cork bursts off, the pressurized seal loud and crisp when it pops and flies off into the grass behind them. _Glug_. The dark liquid, like melted burgundy-gold, swishes and sloshes in the bottle, and glugs out of the rim. _Splash._ Both cups fill, slowly, the rich blood-coloured wine filling the mismatched mugs to their very brims. If picked up with even slightly unsteady hands, it’ll spill over the edge and dribble down the side.

 

They both raise the cups to their lips, slurping the overflow in two loud gulps before properly knocking the mugs together in cheers, and taking longer, heartier drinks. It doesn’t quench thirst- in fact, it’s tart in a way that their tongues and mouths feel dry after drinking it, and it burns its way down their throats. Pomegranate wine.

 

By the time they’re done with their first cups and Wonwoo has filled them to the brim again, Soonyoung is beginning to feel warmth. Not the warmth of the late afternoon sun filtering in through the overgrown shrubs of Wonwoo’s backyard, no, he’s been feeling that all this time. He’s feeling a warmth that runs tremors through his body. In his ribcage, he feels like someone’s lit a fire, all gasoline and dried grass, and it’s uncomfortably comfortable in the same way as it was when he and Wonwoo first curled together in his bed.

 

The drink is making his entire body feel so warm and happy. “Wonwoo?”

 

“Soonyoung?”

 

“Talk to me.”

 

“About what?”

 

“I dunno. Things. Anything. I feel good.”

 

Soonyoung gets confused for a minute, because he begins to think the sun’s rays are shining out of Wonwoo’s beaming grin. “That’s the wine kicking in, weirdo,” is all he says.

 

Soonyoung is talkative sober, and even more talkative when drunk. He’s sitting in a spindly chair under a rusty gazebo with chipping mint-blue paint. He has one of his hands hung in a gap in the pentagonal design, wriggling his finger through it and running it over the ridges in the metal. “Your pool is so nice. So, so nice.”

 

Wonwoo’s pool _is_ nice. Mosaic-tiled, crystal clear blue. The water so still that the sideways sunlight striking it makes it look like glass. They’re sitting a few feet away from it. Wonwoo had suggested swimming, but Soonyoung had declined.

 

“You know what else is nice?” Wonwoo replies, slowly, his words drawling like someone is pulling each one out of him.

 

“You. You’re nice,” Soonyoung says quickly, giggling and hiccupping and covering his mouth. He’s not to a dangerously drunk point- just drunk enough to be loud and talkative, but he’s still perfectly aware of what he’s saying and the kind of reaction it may solicit. That’s why he’s giggling and giddy.

 

Wonwoo shakes his head, deflecting, lips pursed together. He extends a hand and points his finger at what he was talking about before Soonyoung interjected. “No. The flowers.”

 

The flowers are nice. The bougainvilleas are a shock of bright pink, clustering and running the length of the entire wall separating the backyard from the front entrance where the dogs live. The sun shines through them at just the right angle, filtering through the papery, veiny pink petals and creating a pool of resplendent summery pinkness on the ground. Soonyoung wants to stand and bathe in it.

 

“I like them. Can I pick one?”

 

“Why not?” Wonwoo says, playing with the bottle opener on the table.

 

“Can I stand in the patch of pink light underneath them?”

 

“Why not?” Wonwoo repeats, the smile from earlier strengthening, having never slipped off of his face.

 

The nicest thing, Soonyoung thinks, by far and wide, is Wonwoo. He’s never looked better than he does now, and he’s always looked a masterpiece to Soonyoung. His eyes are bright and his high cheeks are flushed pure gold, and his lips are stained redder than they usually are because of the pungency of the pomegranate wine he’s sipping. Every once in a while, a dark burgundy tongue darts out to lick the corners of his lips.

 

He reaches up, standing on the tips of his toes, heels suspended in the air, stretching his muscles taut to pick a flower that his mind sought out as perfect, even though they all look the same. He brings it down and looks at it in the pool of pink-filtered sunlight, and then brings it back to Wonwoo. “Can I put it in your hair?”

 

For the third time, Wonwoo choruses a “why not?”, and tilts his head sideways. He sits still while Soonyoung’s deft little fingers weave it into place in his bed of black hair. “You done?” Wonwoo asks.

 

“Mmm-hmm.” Soonyoung takes a gulp from his cup, a sloppy one that makes dribbles run down the corners of his plump lips. He already has dried red tracks running down his chin from earlier. Wonwoo finds the sloppiness lovable, just like everything else Soonyoung’s ever done.

 

Soonyoung is up again, walking behind the gazebo (Wonwoo can see him through the gaps) to pick something off of a bush that looks like nothing special to Wonwoo, but bears something that attracts Soonyoung’s eye anyway. When he returns, he has two long, tapering orange flowers in his palm. “Honeysuckle,” he says, putting one in his mouth and poking the other into Wonwoo’s.

 

Wonwoo’s voice is muffled and adorably confused. “What do I do with it?”

 

“You _suck_ the _honey_ out of it, obviously! It’s honeysuckle!” Soonyoung sucks the “honey” out of his, relishing in the naturally sugary syrup. He watches Wonwoo suck the honey out of his, and where Wonwoo removes it from his mouth and discards it in the grass, Soonyoung keeps his firmly placed between his lips.

 

“Y’know who the nicest person in this yard is?” Soonyoung blurts out, giggling and hiccupping again. The sound of his laughter rings, because the air is quiet besides the buzz of bugs and swaying, swishing plants in the breeze. They’re at the top of the hill, far-removed from others, burrowed deep in a corner of Wonwoo’s vast yard, behind walls of plants and bricks. It’s only them.

 

“Who?” his voice is dizzying.

 

“You. Honest to dog, I mean God, you’re beautiful,” Soonyoung _is_ honest, but he’s too drunk to realize that he’d demolished the romance by making a simple mistake.

 

“ _Honest to dog_?” His lips burst into a beam, and his laughter bubbles out, sweeter than the honeysuckle nectar. Soonyoung doesn’t even care which words he mixed up. He’s happy because Wonwoo’s happy. He never was religious, and neither is Wonwoo, and the added baggage of the entire dog saga is what really makes Wonwoo explode in unstoppable laughter.

 

“Honest… to… _dog_ ,” Wonwoo mumbles again, his voice still airy and peppered with smaller, tapering laughs. He’s pounding the tabletop as he lets out the last of his laughs, and Soonyoung chimes in, his laughter fueled by Wonwoo’s amusement, not because he reallynthinks what he said was that funny.

 

“Is it really that funny?” He asks when Wonwoo still doesn’t stop laughing.

 

“It really is. Or I’m just drunk enough to think it is.”

 

Soonyoung crosses his arms and sucks on his honeysuckle stem, the flower bobbing up and down as he does. Wonwoo is finally done laughing, his lip corners and stomach sore after minutes of it. The sky is darkening, and something about that pushes Wonwoo into overdrive. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, his voice very, very low at first.

 

Soonyoung lets Wonwoo remove the flower from his mouth and set it gently on the tabletop. “Can I?” he says in response.

 

“Wait… you want to kiss me? Why can’t I be the one to kiss you?” They’re bickering over who gets to be the kisser, and it’s so unromantic and childish, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

“Well, you wanna kiss me. But since it’s my birthday, I wanna kiss you. So can I have it my way?”

 

“Fine. Why not?” he repeats the same words from earlier.

 

Once he allows it, the words hang in the air and they both just sit there, the heaviness of the situation finally settling in on them. They felt no tension discussing who wanted to kiss and be kissed- that happened like a regular conversation, strangely- but now that it was time to do it, they realized what they’d just agreed to. They both realize that they’d just drunkenly confessed to each other in a bizarre, haphazard way.

 

The shadows in the yard have grown long and monstrous, threatening to overtake the gazebo and shroud them in nightly darkness. The brightest, earliest evening stars are beginning to shine above them. “I can?” Soonyoung reiterates stupidly.

 

Wonwoo’s hand is noticeably shaking when he sets his mug down on the table, but his smile is bright and certain nonetheless. He’s _nervous,_ and Soonyoung puts his own nerves and internal tension aside for a second to revel in Wonwoo’s. “Of course you can.”

 

So Soonyoung, whose knees are brushing against Wonwoo’s because of the way their chairs are positioned to face each other and not the table, reaches out to brush a few strands from Wonwoo’s sticky forehead. He’s testing the waters, as always with him. He’s also doing it to ease himself into it, because he thinks his heart might palpitate and explode if he just leans in and… _kisses him_.

 

But then he does, and their lips meet, and it’s the closeness Soonyoung has been craving. His lips taste like honeysuckle nectar and Wonwoo’s faintly like pomegranate wine, but mostly like something soothing and stable and comforting, which must be Wonwoo’s flavour alone.

 

After all these nights struggling to understand whether or not Wonwoo enjoyed his company, watching him sleep and trying to help him, after so many occasions that overlapped and built up and snowballed into a strange fire in his chest every time he saw Wonwoo, he's finally letting his feelings out. And learning that Wonwoo had felt the same way all this time made him feel almost queasy in disbelief and flattery. But then again, Soonyoung thinks he’s just stupid, because if he thinks back on it now, it was always obvious. Why else would Wonwoo ask to hug him, and ask him to sleep in his bed with him?

 

The first kiss is the perfect length, broken off exactly when it feels right to. Wonwoo’s lips are red and swollen and Soonyoung thinks his must be too. The glimmer in his eyes is dancing and twinkling like missing bits of the stars above. “Now it’s my turn,” he says.

 

Soonyoung hums, but he doesn’t expect Wonwoo to climb onto his lap, lift his head up, and run a finger along his jawline as he kisses him and bites at his lips. The bites are soft and barely there, and Soonyoung quite likes it, and Wonwoo’s sudden confidence is surprising in the best way.

 

He lets him lengthen the kisses, and he sighs at the feeling of warm lips pressed into his, at the feeling of the boy he loves wanting to kiss him in the same way he had. Had they been on the same wavelength this whole time, both falling deeply in love and not knowing what to do about it? If they hadn’t been so ignorant of each other’s feelings, maybe they could’ve been doing this a long time ago.

 

“… _Wonwoo, wait_ …” he mumbles, causing him to raise his head from where he had it burrowed into his neck. This was regular fare even before they’d kissed, so it doesn’t have the same terrifying novelty as the kiss does. The terrifying novelty that is still so new and shocking that it’s sobered him up. Wonwoo stares at him, his arms and legs still wrapped around Soonyoung. “When did you ever start liking me like this? I can’t remember feeling like you even wanted me around until recently.”

 

“Hmm. Why would I have let you into my house when there was that storm if I didn’t like you, for example?” Wonwoo asks, confused, as though his fondness for Soonyoung has been completely obvious all this time.

 

“I dunno… you seemed angry and irritated. You didn’t smile at me for weeks.”

 

Wonwoo frowns and plays with the collar of Soonyoung’s shirt, ripping bits of loose string and rolling them between his fingertips. “Yeah, well, emotional repression, remember? I was lonely and weird and I didn’t know how to handle the fact that I liked someone for once.”

 

“So you like me?”

 

“Soonyoung, why are you like this? Why do I need to explain it to you? Why on earth would I be sitting in your lap and letting you kiss me if I didn’t?”

 

“It’s just new to me. I guess you’ve been awfully cuddly and sweet lately, but I just didn’t know what it was all about.”

 

“Because you’re an oblivious weirdo, that’s why,” Wonwoo says, and Soonyoung laughs into Wonwoo’s lips so the sound resonates through him. He’s relatively sober, but the part of being buzzed that makes everything feel better than it ever does is still there. Instead of just feeling like his entire body, inside out, is burning hot, he feels like his love has boiled over and exploded.

 

 

 

“I want to kiss you for every time I had a missed opportunity, now that I can,” Soonyoung announces when he shows up at Wonwoo’s door the following night. After their own intimate backyard birthday party, Soonyoung had returned home early because he knew his parents were waiting for him. As soon as he’d truly sobered up, in fact, he’d helped Wonwoo tidy the backyard and then walked right down the hill. They had cake and a pair of new boots waiting on the kitchen table, and they hugged him and peppered his cheeks with kisses and sang a shaky, too-slow rendition of the happy birthday song.

 

All night, all he could taste was that comforting, stable serenity that came from kissing Wonwoo’s lips. Serenity and comfort aren’t flavours, Soonyoung is aware, but he can’t describe the sensation in any other way, and it lingered on his lips for hours after. He hardly slept because his mind was so packed with leftover surprise that hit him in pangs every few minutes ( _he likes me!_ _I kissed him!_ ). His body also had that childish excitement that prevented him from resting; like when his parents told him they were going on a trip to the beach the night before and he was so eager and jittery that he spent the entire night rolling around in his bed, unable to sleep.

 

Wonwoo is leaning against the doorframe, both eyebrows raised. “Is that so? Which missed opportunities?”

 

“Like the time you fell asleep and I carried you upstairs and put you in bed. Or the time you woke up, scared of the dogs. Or the time you made me lunch. Or that other time when we fell asleep together on your couch and we both got shy after-” Soonyoung is rambling, counting each instance off of his ten raised fingers.

 

Wonwoo is smiling, and his tone is so smart-alecky and self-assured that it surprises Soonyoung. “Aren’t you wasting time and missing an opportunity to kiss me right now?”

 

“Uh? _Oh_ … right…” Soonyoung blushes and slips his shoes off, and Wonwoo lets him inside, shutting the door tightly behind them. When he turns to face Soonyoung, he hugs him instead, for once being the one to bring Soonyoung’s face into his chest. He’s taller, but he’s the younger one that Soonyoung looks after, but there’s this feeling that overtakes him and makes him want to reciprocate the protective affection Soonyoung gives him.

 

Wonwoo leans down so his lips are level with Soonyoung’s round pink ear, and he knows what he’s doing when he whispers softly into it. “Is this all we have planned for today?”

 

“Did you want to do anything else?”

 

Wonwoo shakes his head and runs his hands up and down Soonyoung’s back. “No, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

They make their way to the couch, and they settle such that Soonyoung is lying against his chest, legs straddling his hips, and Wonwoo’s fingers are playing with Soonyoung’s hair. He lifts up a lock, and separates every shiny black strand, and he taps and scratches against Soonyoung’s scalp because he knows he loves it. He kisses him, but he doesn’t care where he plants the kisses, his lips aimed anywhere because any part of Soonyoung is desirable to him. It’s messy and lazy and casual and they lose track of time because it’s impossible to get bored when you’re this in love.

 

Wonwoo wants more of him, but he can’t seem to get enough. He nibbles and bites at the soft, delicate skin of his neck and shoulders, making Soonyoung groan and yelp and smack him playfully. Like a rabbit lured into a fox’s den.

 

“I’m thinking back on it, and I think the exact moment I started trusting you, and letting myself like you, is when I let you into my house that second time. I realized that you were something different, and I let myself develop an attachment towards you.”

 

“But I didn’t really do much to gain your approval at that point, to be honest… all I did was look pitiful on your front porch and yell at you about the dogs…”

 

“I think it’s because, I don’t know, I was wary of you. But then you seemed sweet and happy and open, and I liked you immediately.”

 

Soonyoung blushes. He never thought of himself as anything like that, although he’d definitely heard it plenty from his friends and family. Everyone called him bubbly and bright and benign, but somehow, he never felt it in himself, or he never felt it was a particular virtue of his. Because it was annoying, loud, and overbearing in his mind’s eye, but to Wonwoo, his childish happiness was critical.

 

“And that’s what makes you so trustworthy. I could trust you with anything. And you listen to me when I talk…” Wonwoo gushes, nuzzling into Soonyoung’s round cheeks.

 

“Who wouldn’t? You’ve got a _nice_ voice,” Soonyoung says happily.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Wonwoo replies, unfazed by the flattery. “But see, you’re always praising me, and I don’t really deserve it, but you do it anyway. Because you’re too sweet,” he kisses him, running his pink tongue along the edges of his lips. “You even taste sweet, Soonyoung.”

 

“Who says you don’t deserve it?”

 

“I say. I don’t deserve you,” Wonwoo says, a little bit of that familiar danger in his eyes. When they darken and narrow, and that usually playful glimmer in his eyes becomes sharp and dangerous, like his thoughts are racing well beyond the realm of sanity and his words don’t match up to what he’s thinking of inside. It has a dark beauty to it and Soonyoung is helplessly attracted to it, like every other facet of Wonwoo, but it still nags at the back of his mind and unsettles him somewhat.

 

“That’s not a very good mentality to have,” Soonyoung answers softly, pocketing away how unsettled he feels when he looks into Wonwoo’s eyes and instead focusing on the other side of the coin, which is how dually attractive he finds them right now.

 

He sulks. “I know it’s not. And I’m trying, but it’s not that easy to change. Aren’t we both familiar with the idea that old habits die hard?” While Soonyoung contemplates it, Wonwoo slides his sweater a little ways off of his shoulder, exposing silky skin and clavicles, and gives him a love-bite.

 

“You’re right. I guess pointing it out is beside the point.” He sounds apologetic, but not like he’s coming from underneath and not at all like he regrets what he said. He’s just neutralizing the tone of the conversation again.

 

After this comes a quiet moment, in which Soonyoung runs his fingers along Wonwoo’s arms and shoulders, outlining and tracing them in such a soft, innocently intimate way. Even their kisses up until now had been quite innocent and simple, if Wonwoo’s habit of gently biting Soonyoung’s lips was sided out. It feels natural, and he can tell, like the way they spiraled into love slowly, that over the course of the next few months they’ll spiral into something deeper and even more intimate. Neither of them are impatient, and neither of them are pushy, as long as they’re together.

 

“Do you ever feel numb sometimes?”

 

“Numb?”

 

“My emotions feel staggered by this numbness sometimes.” He inhales sharply through his nose and digs his fingertips into Soonyoung’s hipbone, which makes him let out a small and inappropriate sound. Soonyoung is lying down where he can watch Wonwoo’s Adam’s apple bob with each word. “Being around you, I feel as though you cushion any pain and horrible thoughts I might have.”

 

Soonyoung sits up so he’s just sitting in Wonwoo’s lap and looking down at his reclined figure. “I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. If I’m making you feel happy, that’s great, but if I’m numbing you from feeling things…?”

 

“No, it’s good. I don’t know if it’s the delayed emotions starting to settle in or something else, but being around you lessens whatever I’m feeling.” Wonwoo shifts around, that dangerous look in his eye fading out slowly, like it was just a brief mood that overtook him. So Soonyoung _was_ right in feeling unsettled by that expression, because Wonwoo has some strong emotions right now, and he seems to be trying to cover them up with love and affection, both showering it on Soonyoung and receiving it. Soonyoung doesn’t mind, in fact, he wants to make him as happy as can be, but he’s not sure it’s healthy to numb his feelings away and ignore them.

 

He thinks that’s how emotions eventually stack up, becoming overwhelming and fragile, and then fall apart in pieces, like a house of cards. It never, ever ends well.

 

“Are you sure it’s a good thing?” he worries his bottom lip. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

 

Wonwoo bites back any impatience he has. “Yes, Soonyoung. Don’t make me say it twice, I’m _fine_.”

 

“Okay.” Soonyoung can’t help it. After all this time, he’s developed strong protectiveness that blankets him when he sees Wonwoo. He’s not much older than him, but he feels an internal obligation to be his guardian of sorts, besides being his lover and his friend. Wonwoo unknowingly basks in it- he leans on Soonyoung’s shoulder when he’s down, he holds his hand when he extends it, and he returns his hugs wholly when he wraps his arms around him.

 

Wonwoo sighs. “Come back, you’re too far away…” Soonyoung lowers himself back down so he’s sort of hovering over Wonwoo, both knees pinned onto the couch on either side of Wonwoo’s reclined figure and his head hovering inches above his.

 

“Is this close enough?” Soonyoung teases, his lips brushing against Wonwoo’s when he talks.

 

“No. Closer.” Wonwoo closes his eyes and tilts his chin up.

 

 

By morning, they’ve long since made their way into the bedroom and curled up, blankets discarded and kicked into heaps at their feet. With each other’s body heat to rely on, the sound of crickets carrying on the summer breeze blowing through the window, and any plights and worries forgotten, they both sleep soundly. Wonwoo awakens because of the dogs barking and howling under his open window, and Soonyoung is a light sleeper, so he wakes as well.

 

He whispers little comforting nothings to Wonwoo, whose head falls back onto the pillow, his eyelids drooping slowly.

  
At times like these, Soonyoung remembers the front gate keys that Wonwoo had given him, and his responsibility and the decision that he’s yet to make with such power in his hands. He remembers the keys, still sitting in the pocket of his hoodie down the hill in his bedroom, and he thinks of what he’ll do as he drifts off into sleep.

 

At times like these, Wonwoo mumbles nonsense in his half-asleep state, but Soonyoung sometimes thinks they’re thoughts that Wonwoo would never usually say, but escape his mouth carelessly when he doesn’t have the consciousness to stop them.

 

“Soonyoung… most important…” he mumbled one night, nuzzling the tip of his nose into Soonyoung’s neck and breathing in deeply. Soonyoung had stared at the ceiling and blushed, but no one was there to witness it anyway.

 

One time, when he was fast asleep and clearly in the middle of a deep dream, Soonyoung happened to be awake enough to catch his sleep-talking.

 

“Everyone dies… everyone leaves me… mmm… not Soonyoung,” he had drawled out slowly. His voice was hoarse and the words were almost choked out, and when Soonyoung carefully, quietly untangled himself from him and lifted himself up to look at him, he saw tear-tracks in the corners of his eyes. They were illuminated in the night, as was the sheen of beady sweat coating his forehead and cheeks. He had hugged him tightly (and felt his arms tighten around him, fingers clutching at his cotton shirt), and considered waking him from his seemingly-nightmarish dream, but eventually decided against it.

 

On certain sunny mornings, Soonyoung will wake Wonwoo by rubbing his back and kissing his face all over until he glares at him and slaps his face away. Because, when Wonwoo actually falls asleep, he never wants to wake up.

 

On the particular morning he recalls, he had been struggling in vain to coax Wonwoo out of bed after they’d both overslept. “Wonwoo! Don’t you wanna wake up?”

 

“No.”

 

“Don’t you wanna wake up so you can kiss me?”

 

“I love you, but no,” he says. Wonwoo doesn’t have his eyes open to see Soonyoung completely caught off-guard by such a light phrase. He said he loved him. _I love you._ Casually, in passing, like it’s something Soonyoung should already know. He supposes he does, but hearing it from Wonwoo’s lips for the first time is entirely different.

 

Soonyoung rises up, thinking it over in his head. Wonwoo, oblivious to his words and how they’ve somehow affected Soonyoung, rolls so his head is hanging off of the bed, searching the ground for the T-shirt he’d discarded last night. All Soonyoung can see are pale arms grasping at the tile floor, and shoulder-blades protruding under his skin. “I love you too.”

 

Upon finding the shirt and sitting up straight, Wonwoo’s head emerges after he slides the frayed neck of it over his head, his hair getting dragged down with the collar before bouncing back up. He brushes his hair out of his face once he’s stuck his arms through the sleeves, and then pays attention to Soonyoung’s taken-aback expression. He nudges him with his shoulder.

 

“You said “I love you”,” Soonyoung says, still unable to get over it.

 

“Yeah, I did. I meant it. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that? Don’t tell me you’re going to make me reaffirm that to you?” Wonwoo groans and reaches out to hold his hands. “Come _on_ , Soonyoung.”

 

“Well, I love you too,” Soonyoung says, louder now, his eyes breaking from the glassy, distant stare and focusing on Wonwoo’s face again. Dark under-eye circles and exposed collarbones, ridden with soft pink kiss-bruises and kiss-marks, his lips parted slightly. He’s in love with everything about him.

 

“You’re weird.” He jumps out of bed, his height blocking the slivers of sunlight shining down sideways through the window on the crumpled white linens. He casts a shadow on Soonyoung, so he can look up and see Wonwoo with a halo of bright white light illuminating every stray hair, every bit of dust on him. Soonyoung just sits there, his legs folded underneath him, staring, staring, like looking at Wonwoo is the only thing he knows. Wonwoo just shakes his head at him, oblivious. “Hey. Soonyoung. Stop staring at me. What do you want for breakfast?”

 

 

Loving Wonwoo is dangerous.

 

Soonyoung sits on the counter (swinging his legs and bumping them into the wooden cabinets underneath in a sort of rhythm) and thinks of this repeatedly as he watches Wonwoo. Wonwoo never does anything dangerous- he’s drying clean breakfast dishes as Soonyoung thinks this, in fact- but it’s the act of loving him that is. Soonyoung is so deeply in love that he’ll do anything for him, and doing anything that doesn’t involve Wonwoo feels boring and pointless.

 

He’s been quiet for a few minutes, which is unusual for someone who always seems to have a story to tell. “What’s got your tongue tied?” Wonwoo sounds light and happy, his voice like a beam of white sunlight.

 

Their relationship is one where they spread out their feelings honestly for each other, rip their hearts out and lay them out, raw and throbbing, for each other. The intensity of their honesty and trust is on another level. So Soonyoung spits it out. “I’m thinking about how dangerous you are.”

 

“Me? Dangerous?” He points at himself, and then shakes a fork in Soonyoung’s direction like it’s a sword. “Oh, I’m _very_ dangerous, alright.”

 

Soonyoung rolls his eyes. “You know what I meant. You’re all… y’know…” he gestures vaguely in Wonwoo’s direction, and at the house, and out the window towards the dogs. “ _Dangerous_.”

 

“And what are you going to do about that?” Wonwoo asks, humouring him as he tucks the fork away into the cutlery drawer and throws the dish-cloth into the hamper down the hall.

 

Soonyoung hooks his big toes around Wonwoo’s calf and drags him over, wrapping his legs around him from his perch on the counter and kissing him. “Nothing. I love it.”

 

“So you love a bad boy, huh?” says Wonwoo, smirking down at Soonyoung.

 

“Oh, _shut up_. What kind of bad boy washes dishes and reads trashy romance novels?”

 

Loving Wonwoo is not only dangerous, it’s also forbidden. They have to keep it under wraps (quite literally, under the blankets of his bed), but neither of them really mind that, and they’re both all too familiar with what would happen if anyone in the village knew about them.

 

And even if they cared, and even if Soonyoung wanted to stop loving him for it, he couldn’t. Loving Wonwoo is unconditional above all. He can’t stop himself from loving him, from heeding to him, from melting under his gaze, from thinking of him when he first wakes up and when he closes his eyes to sleep. That’s the most dangerous thing about it.

 

 

Tonight, before going up to meet Wonwoo, he finds the single silver key, left in a discarded hoodie that somehow ended up under his bed. The metal is ice cold from being untouched and forgotten for a while now. He rolls it around between his fingers as he walks up the hill, running the pads of his fingers along the ridges and notches. When he reaches Wonwoo’s front door, he pockets it determinedly and forgets about it for the time being.

 

Tonight, when Wonwoo is dragging Soonyoung upstairs to his bedroom, Soonyoung stops him before they go too far. Because he remembers his decision, and he remembers that he should bring the topic up _before_ every article of clothing they wear is strewn across the room, and certainly before what comes after that, which is exhaustion and deep sleep.

 

Soonyoung is underneath Wonwoo, and all he can hear is the sound of wet lips kissing different parts of his exposed skin. He swallows back the pleasure Wonwoo is drowning him in and forces his mind to focus. “Wonwoo. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on.”

 

He lifts his head up, the glimmer in his eye sharp and clear. He can switch very quickly from one expression to another (something Soonyoung can’t do if he tries), and instead of looking dazed and happy, he’s concentrated and straight-faced once again. His sense of control over his facial expressions and choosing when to convey or shroud them is astounding, the switch so seamless that he could be using theatre masks for all Soonyoung knew.

 

“Um… do you trust me?” Soonyoung says, and he’s absolutely frozen in place, Wonwoo’s legs draped over his, three top buttons of his shirt undone. Maybe he waited too long. But Wonwoo’s learned to be patient with him (Soonyoung sets a good example with his never-ending patience), and Wonwoo’s never been angry with him before.

 

He frowns, and he sounds puzzled, but his answer comes rapid-fire. “Yes?”

 

“You really do?”

 

“Yes, with my life, but why are you asking? And why now of all times?” He shifts into a more comfortable sitting position, not sounding impatient as much as purely confused. Soonyoung doesn’t blame him. Then he smirks a little. “Are you about to murder me or something?”

 

“No! It’s just…” he falters.

 

“If you held my hand and led me into hellfire, I wouldn’t question it. Let’s put it that way.” Wonwoo is sincere. Soonyoung can feel it. He can see it in his sharp black eyes. “Now what is it?”

 

“I’m not going to lead you into hellfire,” is all Soonyoung says in reply, leaving the implications open to Wonwoo’s interpretation. Wonwoo stays silent. Soonyoung climbs off the bed and searches through Wonwoo’s closet, eventually finding something close enough to what he was looking for. A paisley-printed silk scarf, blue and green, the fabric thick enough to serve as a blindfold.

 

His hands are clasped too tightly around Soonyoung’s, as though the vice-like hold will keep him from walking into something. He doesn’t question anything, following Soonyoung blindly down the stairs and across the living room and hallway- this he can tell from the way the floor feels and the way they navigate through it. When he hears the heavy wood of the front door creaking open and feels a blast of warm, muggy air, he almost asks where they’re going. He bites his tongue and that’s what keeps the suspense. Wonwoo’s heart is racing, hairs on his body raising, when Soonyoung helps him slip into his shoes.

 

Soonyoung’s hand is warm. He loosens his grip on it a little, fearing that he’s purpled it or blocked the blood flow. He’s just one step ahead of Wonwoo, and he follows the sound of his shoes slapping against the stone path leading from his front door to the house gate. He hears Soonyoung swing it open, the elongated creak almost eerie when heard in the dead of night like this.

 

Now he follows the sound of Soonyoung’s feet crunching all the fallen pine needles littering the road. They’re red and orange and brown, he knows this like he knows the back of his hand, because the road is never rid of them regardless of the season and he’s been in this house all his life. But now he’s only guessing and not knowing, he supposes, because for all he knows, the world he’s envisioning in his head doesn’t exist beyond the blindfolds. A silly thought, but it’s something that darts through his mind as he idly follows Soonyoung.

 

He has absolutely no idea what Soonyoung is up to. His mind is a blank- for once, his second-guessing, answer-to-everything, logical-conclusions-making mind is completely blank. Unable to even guess what Soonyoung’s got brewing outside at this hour. (He’s practically forgotten about the key and the responsibility of bearing it, two things he’d given Soonyoung a few months ago. If he had remembered that, he’d have let go of Soonyoung’s hands and run back inside.)

 

Two footsteps, and then nothing. He’s still holding onto his hand, so he knows he’s right there, but that doesn’t stop him from letting out a feeble little “Soonyoung?”

 

Soonyoung gives his hand a squeeze. “Just stand here. Stay here. I’ll be a few feet away, but I’ll come back and hold your hand before you know it, ‘kay?” He adopts a manner of speaking that’s similar to the way someone would talk to a scared child, and Wonwoo has no idea why.

 

He nods, and stands unmoving where Soonyoung told him to stay. Soonyoung lets go of his hand, and it drops and hangs limply by his side. He hears footsteps walking away, and then he hears the sound of dog paws padding on a smooth surface, and it feels like something cold is dropped in the pit of his stomach. He wants to claw the blindfold off, spin around in circles to make sure no dogs are near him. He wants to run so hard that the soles of his feet as well as his lungs burn, and lock himself behind sturdy doors. In a matter of seconds, because of one simple noise, he feels vulnerable and small and utterly terrified, especially when robbed of one of his senses.

 

He bites his lip, so hard he draws blood, to keep from calling Soonyoung and ripping the stupid silk scarf off of his eyes.

 

Wonwoo can hear the sound of the key, a perfect fit, sliding right into the gate’s keyhole. _Not the front gates._ He hears the click, so sharp and smooth, of the ridges and notches fitting right into the lock. _Please, not the front gates._ He hears the rust creaking as the key is twisted. _Don’t twist it open._

 

And then he hears the unmistakable sound of his house’s front gates swinging open slowly.

 

He hears Soonyoung speaking to the dogs, gently, calmly, and it somehow gives him the most adverse reaction. A strange feeling bubbles in the pit of his stomach- fear? Hatred? - and he’s shifting in place, holding onto to his last bit of patience and sanity. A lump is growing in the back of his throat, tears are welling in the corners of his eyes, he’s wringing his hands together painfully.

 

“It’s okay, Wonwoo, just relax,” comes Soonyoung’s voice.

 

He can hear padding that sounds far smaller than Soonyoung’s footsteps, crunching the pine needles down and coming closer to him. He stands in place, resilient, but the soul trapped in his body is screaming and gasping and crying.

 

Wonwoo’s holding his breath in. His hands are balled up into fists, and he’s so still he may as well be a statue. The dog approaches him, and he can hear loud sniffs, a low growl. “Soonyoung…” he begins, and never finishes.

 

He can hear loud sniffs, and he can taste blood in his mouth from biting his lips far too hard. He’s waiting, well aware that he’s about to get mauled or bitten or knocked onto the ground.

 

He feels and hears rather than sees the dog walk away from him, disinterested. The second dog follows suit, sniffing at his shoes and pants and nudging his hands with its moist nose, and then slinking away from him. He chokes back a cry and chokes on the plain air he inhales after refusing to breathe for the last few minutes.

 

He’s safe. The dogs are gone. They wanted nothing to do with him. He’s kept them caged for years because he was terrified of them. He’s _safe._ And the dogs are _gone._

 

But that doesn’t mean his fear has just dissipated into thin air. No, the anxiety built up, and it’s still spilling over. He can feel the silk of the blindfold soaking up his tears, and his throat is filling up so much that he can barely breathe. “Soonyoung… Soonyoung! Pl-please,” he gasps, “don’t leave me.”

 

“I’m here,” Soonyoung says, and Wonwoo’s suddenly-acute sense of smell is swarmed by the overwhelming presence of Soonyoung. He can feel him standing in front of him, and gentle fingers unravel the silk tied around his eyes. Delicately, it comes off, and Wonwoo’s eyes don’t have a hard time adjusting because it’s pitch black, but he falls into Soonyoung’s arms. He doesn’t quite know if the small, terrified, involuntary noises hiccuping out of him count as sobs.

 

Soonyoung holds him, and Wonwoo can tell by the stiff way in which he does so that he fears he’s upset him. Wonwoo is upset and terrified and coming down from a spike of adrenaline and anxiety, but he doesn’t blame Soonyoung for it in the slightest. In fact, he thinks what Soonyoung did was the rightest thing that could be done. It showed him, forcefully perhaps, that the dogs deserved to be freed. He’d made the right decision, but Wonwoo is bound to have strong repercussions and reactions.

 

Now he’s dry-sobbing into Soonyoung’s shoulder, the sobs delicate themselves, things only Soonyoung’s ears can catch. That’s what makes it even more saddening and heartbreaking to Soonyoung. Wonwoo claws at the fabric on his back, pulling him closer.

 

Soonyoung hugs him tight, too tightly, but it feels good. It squeezes some of his overwhelming, overbearing emotions out, and its tightness washing some kind of warmth over him to drown out and numb his feelings.

 

“The dogs are gone,” he mumbles into Wonwoo’s ear.

 

“Gone.” Not under his window, not growling and starving and soaking to the bone in the winter rain, not rubbing their spiked collars against the metal gate to create an ominous grate that makes him wince. No longer a ten-year habit and an excuse for Soonyoung to take leftovers up the hill every night. No longer a menace or a constant living reminder of his father.

 

In fact, they never were. Wonwoo is realizing- and it makes his small sobs a little louder- that he was never particularly terrified of the _dogs_. He was only terrified of his father, and he grew to despise them and fear them because they reminded Wonwoo of him, and they tied directly to him. Because he trained them to become beasts, and his father pitted him against them and them against him.

 

Nonetheless, the years of misdirected fear are still heavy on him despite the realization, and now almost every border he’s ever had has been broken. The dogs, barring him from sleep, the remnants of his father, barring him from enjoying his life. And it all terrifies and dizzies him and makes him double over in quiet hysterics.

 

“Wonwoo?” Soonyoung’s voice is small in a way that matches his sobs and how he feels on this vast hillside, under vast trees and an endless sky. “Did I do the right thing? Did I do the wrong thing? Oh, Wonwoo…”

 

“Who am I to say?” Wonwoo inhales sharply, drinking in Soonyoung’s scent. He can’t see. Trembling teardrops are making his vision spin and blur, and Soonyoung blends in with the trees and the sky. Everything’s black and suffocating. “But I think there was nothing else you could’ve done.”

 

“Oh, no… you’re upset…” Soonyoung has separated from Wonwoo and he’s leaning in to look closely at his face, to see the drying tear streaks and the reddened nose and lips, the bright, wild, sad eyes. He’s looking up into Wonwoo’s eyes, and he looks startled and guilty and terrified of what he’s done. “Oh no, oh no.”

 

“I’m not upset with you,” Wonwoo’s sobs are tapering off, but they’re still bubbling out uncontrollably. He isn’t lying. He’s upset, and his vision is blurry with tears, but none of it stems from Soonyoung. “Not in the slightest.” He tries to make this clear, but he can still sense discomfort and guilt curling off of Soonyoung.

 

Soonyoung wipes the tears away from his smooth marbled cheeks with his own rough, chapped knuckles. “But I made you cry. You shouldn’t have let me decide. I ruined everything.”

 

“It’s not you. It’s not you. Really, Soonyoung…” Wonwoo is still hiccuping his words out, and he buries his face into his neck again, hugging him tightly. He hugs him like he’s the anchor keeping him grounded to the planet, but even more than that, he hugs him like someone who’s never had someone there for them when they’re in distress. Soonyoung almost cries with him.

 

He wraps his arms around him, rocking them both back and forth. Something about this feels like he’s hugging a small, terrified boy rather than someone his age. When they loosen their embrace and he looks at Wonwoo again, he almost sees the faint, ghostly flicker of a ten-year-old version of Wonwoo standing before him. Fuller cheeks, wider eyes, more deeply-instilled fear, and an even deeper need for a hand to hold and a shoulder to lean on.

 

 

For once, for the first time since Soonyoung’s spent his first night here, the hillside has been dead quiet. It’s like they’re in an abandoned ghost-mansion atop an empty hill, not even a distant voice or bark on the breeze. Dead quiet. No wind to shake the trees, no dogs to wake Wonwoo, no commotion of villagers in the hills below. And despite that, and ironically enough, Wonwoo can’t sleep.

 

If he can’t sleep, it means neither can Soonyoung- because Soonyoung’s habit is sitting with his head propped on his elbow, stroking Wonwoo’s hair and engaging in idle pillow-talk until he nods off. Only then, when hears his breathing slow and level out, when he sees his lips slightly parted and his eyelids gently shut, can Soonyoung fall asleep. So if Wonwoo is unable to sleep, Soonyoung knows, and it means he can’t either.

 

“Wonwoo, it’s been three days and you’re still crying.”

 

Wonwoo, who has his back pressed into Soonyoung’s abdomen, Soonyoung’s arms wrapped over and around his skinny frame protectively, turns his head away to hide the tears from him. They’re lying in bed together, and just when Soonyoung thought that Wonwoo might’ve come over the hurdle of the other night and the emotional impact it had on him, Wonwoo bursts into quiet tears again.

 

He doesn’t mind him crying; he’s there to wipe the hot tears from his cheeks and kiss his swollen under-eyes. What he minds is that Wonwoo seems far from “fine”, a word he insists on using whenever Soonyoung asks him how he’s feeling. And what’s even more concerning than that is that he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, when he had opened his heart raw to Soonyoung previously. It’s unsettling, and Soonyoung feels entirely responsible for it. He takes the blame- he’s the one that let the dogs out and thought it would be a good idea to bring Wonwoo down there blindfolded, since he’d never have agreed otherwise and it needed to be done. Soonyoung regrets his stubborn, selfish desire to prove that the dogs were tame- the dogs lived up to his faith in them, and they’re free now, but it cost him Wonwoo’s trust and stability.

 

Something about his tears right now terrifies Soonyoung as well. The initial tears when Soonyoung had opened the gates and the dogs had left were unexpected but not surprising. He didn’t know Wonwoo had it in him to be so openly upset (he’d never seen him cry until then), but that doesn’t mean he didn’t feel he was completely justified. Now, these tears are quiet. They’d go unnoticed if Soonyoung weren’t so attentive towards Wonwoo. They just trickle out, no sobs, no sniffling, no change in his breathing pattern. They’re those quiet-suffering tears that are meant to be ignored.

 

“Wonwoo, please look at me. Don’t hide from me,” Soonyoung mumbles, fingers tracing the ridges in his curving spine in a way that he knows from experience soothes Wonwoo. “I don’t care if you’re crying. I just wanna know why, and if I can help.”

 

Wonwoo turns, slowly, leaving the side of the pillow his head had been pressed against damp and warm, and pressing his cheek against cold, fresh fabric. “I’m really okay,” he says, straight-faced, as though there isn’t wetness glistening along the ridges of his cheekbones, a teardrop clinging to the tip of his nose.

 

“I know you’re not. I’m only going to worry about you more the more secretive you get.”

 

He sighs, avoiding Soonyoung’s eyes when he speaks. “Too many things to name, Soonyoung. It piles up and I get sad and I don’t know how to get happy again.”

 

“It’s because of what I did though, isn’t it?” Soonyoung asks, rubbing circles into the palms of his small, bony hands now. Wonwoo is practically limp, skin and muscles supple under Soonyoung’s soothing power. “You haven’t been okay since the other day.”

 

Tears well up and stop short of falling, trembling at the brim of his eyes. Soonyoung’s heart wells up when he sees them, filling to the brim with feelings of guilt and just stopping short of overflowing, too. He eases the tightness in his chest and the knot in his throat. He never should have accepted the key from Wonwoo, or taken the initiative and made the decision. He actually doesn’t regret the decision, but he regrets the outcome, which makes him regret the decision anyway.

 

“It reminded me of a lot of old things. Old thoughts resurfaced. It also reminded me of how much I miss my uncle.”

 

“So are these the delayed emotions you said you’d probably get?” Soonyoung is aware that he’s whispering, but alone with Wonwoo like this, his regular pitch feels like a shout. 

 

“You could say that,” Wonwoo says dismissively. “I just need to get them out, because I used to keep them in and that never ends well.”

 

Soonyoung nods. “Can I kiss you?”

 

“You don’t really need to ask-“

 

“I just thought, since you’re sad and tired, maybe you wouldn’t-” Wonwoo brings his face closer to Soonyoung and presses his lips against his. They taste salty from tears dribbling down the corners of his lips, and they feel searing hot and swollen against his. “Do hugs and kisses still make you feel better, or have we abused that too much?”

 

His chuckle is watery and fragile, but it still sounds like heaven to Soonyoung’s ears. “Yes. I’ll never get tired of doing anything with you.”

 

“That’s good to know,” he murmurs into his lips. He can feel tiny breaths ghosting over his upper lip as Wonwoo breathes shallowly.

 

“I read somewhere,” he begins slowly, still fixing his gaze on Soonyoung’s ear rather than his eyes, “that when a traumatic event is happening, many people seem all stoic and strong. Not to call myself stoic, but I feel like I fell into that category. And when it’s over and they know they’re in safe arms, and it’s _over_ and done with, they break down.”

 

Soonyoung wraps Wonwoo in his safe arms. “So it’s over and it’s done and now you’re feeling sad.”

 

“Yeah… I think so.”

 

“And I’ll always be around to hug you until you feel better.” Wonwoo nods weakly at that.

 

 

The minute he sees Wonwoo entering the bakery early in the afternoon, he knows something is wrong. The wrongness of it makes his skin prickle and the inside of his stomach feel cold. He’s almost queasy, and he almost tips a pair of empty plates as he carries them to the backroom kitchen.

 

“Easy there,” Wonwoo says, steadying the tipping plates with his hands. “Are you tired?”

 

“Not in the slightest. When are you ever here at this time of day? It’s like seeing a ghost walking down the street.”

 

“I came down to see you at work. I own the place, I do as I please…”

 

“Sure, boss,” he grins and reaches out to flip the “open” sign onto the “closed” side, and he pulls the thick blue shutters down to block the floor-to-ceiling display of the shop from the street side. A few months ago, when Soonyoung first got his job at this bakery and after Wonwoo had inherited it, Soonyoung got into the habit of teasing him by calling him his boss. Wonwoo hates it, so of course Soonyoung throws it around like a pet name. He pulls Wonwoo in and kisses his nose.

 

Wonwoo tries to reciprocate, but Soonyoung notices a certain strangeness in the way he does it. It’s not fluid and natural when he kisses him back and runs his hands through his hair. Not forced, not like he’s upset, but like there’s something else clouding his mind. Soonyoung pulls away, eyeing him nervously. “Wonwoo, what is it?”

 

He tries to cover it up, but he knows that Soonyoung is far too perceptive to overlook his strange, detached mood. “You have pastry cream on your cheek,” he mumbles, deflecting, and reaching up to swipe it off with his index finger and lick it clean.

 

“Gross.” He shakes his head. “No, but something’s on your mind. You wanna talk?”

 

“Not really…” he shrugs his shoulders uncomfortably, shrugging off Soonyoung’s proposal and the hand that Soonyoung had on his shoulder at once. “I came down to tell you that it’s probably better if you don’t come up to my place tonight, Soonyoung.”

 

There’s got to be a reason for this. He knows he should ask for an explanation, ask _why_ , before rushing to conclusions. But his heart still feels crushed, hanging heavy like a sandbag in his chest. Why doesn’t Wonwoo want him around anymore? Does he not love him? Is that why he’s not returning his kisses? Soonyoung shouldn’t be so selfish- he should think about why Wonwoo is upset, rather than how Wonwoo’s behavior is affecting him- but his mind and heart feel clouded and heavy now too. He almost wants to cry because of a single sentence. “…why?”

 

“Don’t take it personally, Soonyoung. There will be other nights for you to spend over at my place. I really think I just need to be alone tonight. I’ve got… a lot to think about.”

 

Soonyoung almost doesn’t trust him alone. He thinks he’ll do something crazy, or he’ll go into a fit, or he’ll cry himself to sleep or something. He _knows_ Wonwoo, and he knows him so well that this behavior shocks him because it’s as un-Wonwoo as can be.

 

But then he reminds himself that Wonwoo is a grown man, and Soonyoung should respect him. He should be able to trust him to be alone for one night if he needs it, and worry not about what he does. He’s got no authority over him and he doesn’t want to be in that kind of relationship, after all.

 

His eyes meet Wonwoo’s, pinning his gaze before it darts away in avoidance. Wonwoo looks back at him, but his eyes are still distant. “Okay. You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

 

“…I’m okay.” _I’m okay,_ he said, not _I’m going to be okay._ Soonyoung catches this loophole in his words, and it makes his heart feel heavier, but he bites his lip and nods instead.

 

 

He’s grown accustomed to the feeling of Wonwoo’s bouncy spring mattress, his soft linen sheets and his silky pillowcases. Sleeping next to Wonwoo is something he’s grown accustomed to as well. Small snores and sleep-talking in that cute, gravelly morning-voice of his, his arms reaching out and pulling Soonyoung closer towards him. Sharp little fox eyes shining in the dark when he flips over to face Soonyoung and finds him awake as well.

 

Now that Soonyoung’s been cast out for one night after so many months of not touching his own bed, he feels cold and alone. His twin bed is too tight and cramped. His sheets are old and scratchy. His toes feel cold, and he can’t tuck them into Wonwoo’s legs, seeking to leech from their warmth, and have Wonwoo curse him and his frozen feet. His mattress feels rock-hard and unyielding.

 

Most of all, he’s nervous and jittery. Something’s not right, and it nags at the back of his head like an old ache. He tries his best to ignore it, but he knows his subconscious is keeping an ear out for any sounds, even though he wouldn’t hear any this far down the hill and on a cul-de-sac off the main road. His ears are straining, but he doesn’t even know what he expects to hear.

 

When he finally begins drifting towards sleep, his entire body jolts, as though the room had shaken violently. This happens to him sometimes when he falls asleep. But when he rests his head back down on his pillow and closes his eyes, he can hear a faint, distant whirring. Like a car engine.

 

He opens one eye, and reaches up to push the window above his bed open. Cool night air floods inside, as do the sounds of the night. Crickets, wolves, trees rustling. And the sound of the car engine is gone. He must’ve imagined it.

 

But he keeps his ear trained for any other noises, and soon enough, he hears it again, closer now. The engine sounds louder and rougher. Soonyoung shuts his eyes and prays that it’s his imagination. But then he hears a car speeding _down_ the hill, and he hears it through his window as it passes down the cut of main road that runs past his house.

 

He gets out of bed and edges towards the living room balcony, slipping outside quietly. _Please let it be me making things up._ He hangs off the railing, peering out at a precise spot between the cascading hills, where he knows there’s enough of a clearing to see the town square where the bakery is. Somehow, his subconscious knows that he needs to look there.

 

There are yellow streetlights lining the road, and he can see two sets of bright red car tail-lights. He can’t see anything besides that. He hates himself for choking on a relieved breath, and he hates himself for having raked his eyes through the town square for a recognizably lanky figure. He really doesn’t trust Wonwoo enough.

 

Just when he’s coming off his high, the queasiness in his stomach receding, he sees an ant-sized figure (from his distance and in the darkness, everything is small and grainy and vague) approaching. The cold slickness coils up his throat again and he swallows it down painfully.

 

The figure gets in one of the cars, revving the engine so harshly that the sound echoes through the village easily. He floors the gas pedal and the sports car shoots off. It drives in circles around the fountain with the statue. It leaves tracks on the asphalt. Within a few minutes, the smell of hot, burning tires hits Soonyoung’s nose and makes him come close to being sick again. The sound of their squeaking and whining and the hot friction against the asphalt makes his skin crawl.

 

He has no idea what’s going on, but he knows the cars are glossy sports cars. Only one person in the village has cars like that.

 

And he’s so anxious, he’s so desperate to be doing something to stop him, to stop this, that he doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. It’s almost like blacking out and waking up somewhere else with no idea how you got there. He doesn’t feel himself doing it, but apparently he flies through the house and out the backdoor. Barefoot, in flannel pajamas that drag and catch on the loose bits of asphalt. Pebbles and shards of glass embed into the supple soles of his feet as he runs down his family’s driveway.

 

He doesn’t even know where he is, but he’s reliant on muscle memory and that can never fail him in the place he was born and raised in. Soonyoung’s running down the main road, running down a steep hill, and it’s miraculous that he doesn’t trip and fall. He’s gasping for air by the time he’s come close to where the scene is.

 

The rush of blood makes his temples pound in throbbing pain. His ears pulse and ring. His throat and lips are cracked-dry, and licking them is useless when his tongue feels like sandpaper.

 

Somehow, he’s down the hill, and somehow, he crosses the street and stands on the very edge of the sidewalk. The car’s still there, but both cars are empty. If this is a dream, Soonyoung wants to wake up now. Tears seep out of the corners of his eyes, unwanted tears, unnecessary tears, tears of guilt and built-up anxiety. He knows what’s happening, but he’s lost, too, and he’s still desperately hoping that he’s wrong.

 

And then Wonwoo appears. His shoulders are slumped and he’s walking funny, drifting sideways and almost tripping over his own feet. Soonyoung blinks, hoping it’s a hallucination, but when he opens his eyes again, Wonwoo’s still there and he’s still being strange. In his left hand he carries what looks like a stolen, unopened gallon of gasoline. Soonyoung isn’t sure it’s stolen, but he’s assuming it is, and that just strikes him and upsets him on another level.

 

Somehow, something possesses Soonyoung to stay quiet, to stay crouched and silent and practically invisible by the bushes on the sidewalk. He’s watching everything as it unfolds as though he’s an invisible third person reading a story, as though he has nothing to do with it. It’s surreal, it’s almost like an out-of-body experience, like he has no control and he’s strapped down and he can do nothing but watch. But he has to remind himself that this isn’t a dream and he can’t just freeze up and pretend it is and hope everything will be fine.

 

Wonwoo uncaps the bottle of gasoline, stumbling under the force of his arm wrenching the plastic cap open and sloshing gasoline down his front as a result. It smells acrid and it’s so strong that it makes the inside of Soonyoung’s nose burn when he inhales.

 

Soonyoung is slow. He’s sleepy and tired and completely bewildered. So bewildered that he’s processing everything very slowly. But he realizes what Wonwoo’s doing with the gasoline and the matchbox and the two parked cars. His father’s cars.

 

“Wonwoo?” he croaks out, taking a tentative step forward, off the sidewalk and onto the asphalt. He reaches out, his hand extending before him.

 

Wonwoo turns around. His eyes are pure and full and bursting with that wild danger Soonyoung sometimes saw slivers of when he was upset. This was the culmination of it, the ripping-at-the-seams overflow. Soonyoung only now realizes that Wonwoo is likely drunk as well. When he spots Soonyoung and recognizes him, his features turn soft. It’s like a werewolf taking mercy on a child, or something, but even the softness on his face is terrifying to Soonyoung right now. “No, _no_ … why are you here? Soonyoung, stay away, please.”

 

“But Wonwoo…” Soonyoung backs up and trips over the curb, catching himself before he falls. He stays away, keeping a good few metres between him and Wonwoo and the cars. Soonyoung is scared of him. He’s scared of his eyes. He’s scared of what he’s going to do. When has he ever been scared of _his_ Wonwoo? “What are you…”

 

His words are slurred and they sound like they’re being forced out of him. “Soonyoung… just, just go away, please.”

 

But he can’t just pretend he didn’t see any of this, he can’t pretend he has no attachment to Wonwoo, he can’t just walk back home and clean the cuts in his feet and go back to bed. He’s in too deep to turn around and _go away._

 

Wonwoo drizzles the gasoline across the exterior of both cars, making the greenish-yellow liquid glug out and set an oily sheen that catches in the streetlights. “Wonwoo, don’t do this.”

 

“ _Ssssh_.” He throws the now-emptied bottle aside and it clatters away on the asphalt. The road’s dead empty, because it’s too late for anyone to be out driving. Wonwoo and Soonyoung should be tucked away in each other’s arms, like they always are at this time of night. But tonight, everything’s inverted and everything’s ruined, and they’re under the full moon but none of it is normal. Instead Soonyoung is terrified and heartbroken and sick from the inside out, and Wonwoo is reckless and dangerous and drunkenly unpredictable, and they’re standing in the middle of a highway.

 

Wonwoo picks up the matchbox and pulls a red-tipped match out. “Don’t! You have gasoline on your clothes! Don’t do it! Wonwoo, can’t you hear me!” Soonyoung feels like he’s in one of those dreams he used to have when he was little, where he yelled as loudly as he could and still no one could hear his voice.

 

He ignores Soonyoung yelling behind him and strikes the match to ignite it, throwing it away onto one of the cars before his clothes catch. He has tears streaming down his cheeks now, those same silent bouts of crying from before. That’s why Soonyoung doesn’t notice him crying, because all he can see is the back of Wonwoo’s head.

 

The cars catch immediately, the fire snaking up and rising in huge orange plumes. They’re licking and whipping and crackling in the still night, and they rise up too high. It’s bigger than any bonfire Soonyoung’s ever seen. It’s taller than his family’s house. The heat he feels from the wall of flames licking at the cars makes his face sear and burn until he turns away.

 

He can smell it. Car paint and car exhaust and plastic burning. Leather, fabric, vinyl, all burning and feeding the growing flames in the town square. The flames are spreading, jumping off of the car and onto bits of the road where Wonwoo dripped gasoline on accident. Soonyoung is panicking, but he’s mostly standing in open-mouthed, frozen terror.

 

And now he can hear doors opening and the sound of a few villagers grumbling and calling out into the night. He knows it’s not long before they flood the square, or call the firefighters, or something. He needs to get Wonwoo away from here.

 

“Wonwoo!” He pulls him backwards, tripping over his weight when he falls into his arms. He drags them both towards the sidewalk, straining under the heat of the flames and the acrid, burning stench he’s breathing in. His lungs feel blackened from brief exposure to it.

 

He gets them to the bushes, and he sets Wonwoo down. They’re completely hidden behind the tall fronds, full of their summer foliage. Wonwoo still reeks of gasoline, and now that Soonyoung can see him up close, face illuminated in the flickering orange light of the fire, he sees that the dangerous spark in his eye has died out. He looks worn through and tired and too sad for someone so young.

 

“Wonwoo, talk to me, please,” Soonyoung says, crouching down next to him.

 

Wonwoo shakes his head and looks away from him, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I needed to do this.”

 

“Why burn them like this? Why get drunk and steal a bottle of gasoline and speed through the town square?”

 

He shakes his head again. “I don’t know. Emotional repression… or, or something else, but it all bubbled up. I don’t know,” he repeats, sounding like a broken record. “Sadness got to me. I’m… not okay, Soonyoung.”

 

“You never were okay. I knew it was an empty lie the first time you told me you were,” Soonyoung shushes, reaching out to hug him and then stopping short, his hand trembling outstretched before he tucks it away again. He wants to, but he’s almost scared to. When has he ever been scared of Wonwoo? But then again, when has Wonwoo kept secrets hidden from him and lied to him when he asked him repeatedly if he was okay?

 

Wonwoo, drunk and only just sobering up as he may be, notices this. More tears come and sobs do too, and he turns away from Soonyoung, refusing to look him in the eye. Like he’s too ashamed of what a monster he’s become and what he’s made of himself. He thinks he’s ruined Soonyoung’s perception of him forever. He’s a beast and nothing else. Soonyoung should never have seen this side of him. This overflow of anger and sorrow should’ve been his burden alone.

 

The voices around them are becoming louder and clearer, which means at least a few villagers are flooding down to see what’s been set ablaze in the town square. Maybe they’ll gasp and consider it a bad omen, a threat from the spy’s son, when they find that his cars are the ones burning down, engines combusting and exteriors dripping melted paint.

 

“Did you see… him?” Someone asks, just beyond the bushes where they’re hiding. Soonyoung lies low, pressing his head down into Wonwoo’s chest, completely frozen. He has a hand clamped to Wonwoo’s lips to stifle his crying and gasping.

 

“No. He seems to have set them on fire and just gone,” another villager replies.

 

“Should we go up to his house?”

 

“By God, do you hear yourself! He’ll kill us, or have those horrible dogs do it.”

 

Soonyoung shakes his head and tunes out their conversation again, wishing he hadn’t listened in the first place. Once they’ve moved away from where they’re hiding, he whispers into Wonwoo’s ear. “Wonwoo. I need to get you home. Can you walk with me? We’ll go up through the forest parallel to the main road.” The forest parallel to the main road, where the shrubbery and huge old-growth trees will keep them well-hidden from anyone as long as they don’t make too much noise. They’ll pass by the old river where Wonwoo once drowned, and eventually wind up at his front door.

 

Wonwoo grimaces and has Soonyoung help haul him up, clutching at his temples afterwards. “Yeah. I can walk. You… you lead the way, I’ll follow.”

 

So he does. Painstakingly slowly, they steal away from their hideout in the bushes and climb off of the edge of the sidewalk and into the meadows where houses are few and far between. They stay low, crouched and heads tucked down towards their chests, and Soonyoung is holding Wonwoo loosely by the hand, just so he doesn’t lose him in the dark. Or maybe so Wonwoo doesn’t think of running away from him again, because he’s learned his lesson tonight about not trusting Wonwoo alone with himself in that house.

 

They walk onwards in silence, the air heavy with midsummer heat and the buzzing of insects, mosquitos and lacewings and midges that they smack away every few seconds. The air’s also heavy with the shock and terror of what just happened, settling down on both of them in different ways. Wonwoo, realizing what he’s done as he sobers up, and Soonyoung, realizing what Wonwoo’s done and attempting to wrap his mind around it. Their anger isn’t necessarily directed at each other, but the air is heavy with tension and awkwardness and sadness, which builds a wall between them. So they walk, hand in hand but not for any reason besides necessity, silent but only because there’s too much and it’s all better left unsaid.

 

“Wonwoo, do you have your house keys?” Soonyoung asks when they step out of the edge of the woods and onto flat gravel, his front door in plain sight now. It’s only a few minutes away.

 

“They’re… um, they’re in the door,” he replies.

 

Soonyoung shakes his head but purses his lips shut. He was so destructive, so angry, so unable to control himself that he even left the keys on the outside of the door, for anyone to walk in and rob the place? But he doesn’t say anything, because the scrutiny won’t do anything but add fuel to the fire (so to speak) in this kind of situation.

 

He admits them into the house, and takes Wonwoo upstairs without even turning on the lights as they go. They trudge through the house, bathed in darkness and silence, and they stumble up the stairs. The way they’re going through the motions and the way Soonyoung’s operating is robotic and immediate, like someone else is commanding him and controlling his body. He feels more than ever like he’s in a dream he has no control of. He wishes more than ever that he could wake up and find himself asleep in Wonwoo’s bed just like any other night. He helps him clean up, changing him from pants with gashes ripped in the knees and a sweater with charred, ashy sleeves that reeks of gasoline.

 

The entire time, Wonwoo’s going through the motions silently too. His eyes are unreadable, and he’s stopped crying, but his lips and nose tip are still red and his cheeks still have streaks of clear wetness. He only talks when Soonyoung’s led him to his bed and covered him with blankets, and sat next to him on the very edge of the mattress, ready to fly from the room if needed. Soonyoung’s expression is just as unreadable as his is. All those months where he slowly learned what each look in his eyes meant- where did all of that knowledge go now? He feels terrified that he’s lost it all, because Soonyoung is distant and closed-off and silent.

 

The silence is eating at both of them, chewing through them and leaving them aching and raw.

 

 “You…” Soonyoung begins, trailing off immediately. He regrets being the first to speak.

 

“I’m a monster,” Wonwoo says, plain and simple. It’s not something that can be argued with, in his mind.

 

Soonyoung looks at him, tilting his head to one side like he does when he’s confused. Now Wonwoo can see bewilderment in his eyes. But his tone is still clipped and low and serious. “Where did this come from? You’re not a monster.”

 

“You should never have to see me again…” Wonwoo continues, looking away from Soonyoung when he says it because he thinks watching the expressions flash across his face will make him cry. He focuses on a loose string on his blanket, swallowing a lump of tears back down his throat.

 

“ _Ssssh_. Sleep, Wonwoo.” _We can talk later,_ his eyes seem to say.

 

 _We can’t,_ Wonwoo wants to say.

 

Wonwoo ignores him and barrels onwards. He’s lost any sense of a barrier keeping back his thoughts, and they all burst out before he can stop them. He’s babbling, he’s drunk, he’s emotionally and physically spent, and his mind is in a dark, dark place. A place even Soonyoung can’t help him out of, and a place he doesn’t want Soonyoung to come near; he’s far too pure and kind to be subjected to that. It’s Wonwoo’s problem, and he can’t rely on Soonyoung to fix it for him. “You shouldn’t be here right now. You can’t love me… I won’t let you love someone like me…”

 

“But I will always love you the same,” Soonyoung says under his breath.

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“Whether you do or don’t, _I_ do.”

 

Wonwoo rolls away, bunching up his shoulders to hide his face behind them. He wants his privacy, and Soonyoung grants him that by leaving the bedroom and shutting the door behind him. Wonwoo feels the edge of the bed bounce up and lighten, and he feels sadder than before. He’s pushing Soonyoung away for no reason. After all that Soonyoung did for him tonight, and all the nights before.

 

Out in the hall, Wonwoo hasn’t heard any footsteps receding, because Soonyoung is slumped and exhausted in the hallway, and he doesn’t know whether to stay or to go.

 

He’s thinking of too much, but one thing becomes very clear and is pushed to the forefront of his thought-stream. Real love isn’t kisses and hugs and holding hands. Real love is willing to risk his life for someone; real love is running through broken glass barefoot to pull someone away from a fire, real love is letting them cry on your shoulder without even asking why. And he didn’t know what his relationship with Wonwoo could constitute as before now, but he knew it was unconditional and dangerous.

 

Now he knows that real love is unconditional, and real love is a dangerous thing.

 

 

 

In the end, his footsteps retreat down the hall and down the stairs and out the front door, and in retrospect, Soonyoung thinks that’s the worst thing he could’ve done. But at the time, it seemed right to give Wonwoo space.

 

 

Too much space. For Soonyoung and Wonwoo, it’s always been freeing to be together and suffocating to be apart. Now there’s too much space and the distance between them is a gaping hole that can’t be patched together.

 

 

Soonyoung wakes up very late the next morning. He passed out from sheer exhaustion after sneaking back into his home, and woke up to his very curious, very worried mother fretting over his cut-up feet. His heels and soles were smeared with brownish dried blood and bits of green broken-beer-bottle glass accumulated from running barefoot on a gravel road. Strangely, he felt no pain. He rinsed them off and bandaged them up before his afternoon breakfast.

 

Before he leaves his bedroom, he stops and wonders if it was all a dream. A fever dream, an hours-long overnight dream that was so lucid and vivid and out of control that he confused it with reality. Maybe he’ll go up to Wonwoo after breakfast and Wonwoo will laugh at his funny hallucinations and comfort him from the uneasiness he feels. Maybe it was all a figment of his imagination and nothing else.

 

But he knows it’s not and denying it is futile, and here he is convincing himself despite the cuts on his feet and the memories being too fresh and too real in his mind.

 

At breakfast, it seems the talk of the town overnight and into the morning has been of the expensive, brand-new sports cars that had been set on fire in the town square. Now Soonyoung knows it definitely did happen. Everyone knew whose cars they were, but everyone edged around that aspect because they were all scared of the spy’s son’s temper. They were scared that he’d set their houses on fire like the cars, or release the dogs on them. If Soonyoung’s mood wasn’t so dark, he would’ve scoffed- the dogs had been free for a while now, and Wonwoo only burned the cars down like that because they somehow haunted him, leaving an everlasting memory of his father right outside his door.

 

Like always, after eavesdropping on his parents’ conversation for long enough to catch the gist of it, he tunes them out, and like always, he curls his lip in distaste. There’s nothing he’s hated more than gossip and misguided prejudice, but now it’s even more disturbing and personal to him.

 

Soonyoung leaves his house and makes for the top of the hill as soon as he can break away without attracting any suspicion and curiosity. His feet would lead him there even if he were blindfolded. He doesn’t know if it’s because Wonwoo’s been on his mind all night, or if it’s because Wonwoo’s his only comfort and his only anchor right now.

 

He rings the doorbell once. Twice. Thrice. He raps his knuckles sharply against the wood, rings the doorbell again, and swings the knocker too many times. Wonwoo would definitely know that it’s him. So why isn’t he answering?

 

But Wonwoo’s gone. All the windows are boarded up, closed and locked up like an abandoned warehouse. The front door is shut, and it seems, locked, because Soonyoung tries to pick it open to no avail. No shoes on the porch. No laundry on the line in the backyard.

 

He’s gone like a wisp that was sucked away into another world. He’s gone in the blink of an eye- Soonyoung closed them last night, and opened them to find him gone. _Gone._

 

There’s no sign of him. Soonyoung jogs all the way down to the bakery, and finds it locked and sealed, and a sign saying it’ll be closed until future notice. He closes his eyes and rubs his temples and swipes his hands through his hair, pulling at the roots. He has so many emotions bubbling up that he can’t even make sense of anything anymore. It’s maddening. He wants to scream and kick and cry. He doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. The village he’s known since his first day on earth now seems alien and distant.

 

Has Wonwoo disappeared? Did Wonwoo never really exist? Did he miss a piece of the puzzle, and did he fall in love with a ghost? Where did Wonwoo go?

 

He’s standing on the sidewalk by the bakery, and his mind feels like it’s swelling, ready to explode under the heat and the overwhelming layers of emotion. He feels sensitive and prickly all over. He wants to run away from the village, run from his skin and bones, from these last twenty-four hours. They’ve not been a dream- they’ve been a living nightmare.

 

He just wants to be okay, and the only way he feels okay is when he hugs Wonwoo. This makes a tear fall down his cheek and curve into the corner of his lip. Soonyoung has no one to trust and no one to love, nowhere to go and nothing to do. Nothing to do but be inside of his own brain, swarmed and drowned by these overwhelming emotions.

 

He takes one of his shortcuts back home, ripping through empty woodland and hoping that if he runs fast enough, he’ll leave behind all of his feelings, as well as what happened overnight. Maybe he can leave behind the tears. Maybe running against the hot wind will dry his eyes.

 

 

One month passes and still he climbs to the top of the hill every day, in vain delusion that sometime, he’ll knock and Wonwoo will answer.

 

He has a sweater. Mottled-grey, woven wool, a simple pull-over. It’s Wonwoo’s, and the sleeves usually cover his hands down to his knuckles if he doesn’t push them up. Soonyoung finds it at random, and when he sees it, he can picture it clinging to the edges of Wonwoo’s frame, his sharp, bony shoulders and then again at his hips. The memory almost makes him cry, but he bites his lip and swallows them back.

 

Soonyoung doesn’t exactly remember how he kept it in his possession. By chance, he supposes, because usually, he stumbles down the hill so hurriedly that he barely realizes what he’s wearing or where he’s going if it weren’t for muscle memory. He assumes it’s from one of the times he dropped food on his shirt, or maybe when he got too cold and Wonwoo gave him something warm from his closet to borrow. It doesn’t matter, but what does is that it’s unwashed and it smells like him.

 

Burying his nose into it almost gives him the same sensory experience as burying his nose into Wonwoo’s chest does. _Almost._ He can feel that serenity wash over him. What he can’t feel is the warmth and the stability of a body as he presses up against it.

 

This sweater is his anchor, his reminder that Wonwoo exists and that his existence wasn’t a figment of Soonyoung’s imagination. He buries it deep in the back of his closet and brings it out only when he misses Wonwoo deeply (he always does, but it’s become a dull ache). It’s already losing its novelty and its Wonwoo-ish-ness, but like everything else, Soonyoung’s in denial.

 

Sadness had turned into anger and harsher denial at some point soon after that morning where Wonwoo disappeared.

 

Because after running back home through the woodland that morning, Soonyoung found a shady spot against a stone wall in the backyard and tried to coax one of the neighbor’s housecats over to sit on his lap, and he overheard an exchange between his mother and the neighbor lady. He wasn’t an eavesdropper, but he always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and he always seemed to get his information from craning his neck and straining his ears.

 

 “Did you hear about the spy’s son?”

 

Soonyoung’s mother was hanging wet clothes, but she leaned over the balcony railing to reply. “I heard.”

 

“No, we’ve all heard about how he burned the cars down, but you see,” and here the old woman cleared her throat, eyes alight because she knew she was about to break juicy, important information to someone who was in the dark, and that kind of power gave her sick delight, “he fled the village the morning after. He’s gone.”

 

Soonyoung froze, his fingers halting halfway down the neighbor cat’s back. Everything froze, and when he broke it and lurched forward, so aggressively that he kicked up dirt and leaves, he knew both his mother and the neighbor’s eyes were on him. The neighbor cat hissed and ran away from him. He didn’t turn his head to see them (he didn’t have to acknowledge them that way, and be included in a conversation where he had to regulate his expression and pretend he wasn’t breaking inside). Soonyoung sat still and listened.

 

“Thank goodness,” Soonyoung’s mother said. He turned away to hide the look of distaste on his face, even though he was so far-removed from where they were chattering that they probably wouldn’t notice it. “So we’re rid of him at last?”

 

“Yes. He’s gone! Packed up everything, locked up the house, left the village for good! Some say he’s off in some country up north!”

 

Soonyoung got up and dusted off the seat of his pants, scattering loose dirt and rocks underneath him. He was slouched, and he walked away slowly, making for the woodland that hinged on the farthest edge of their back-garden. He wanted to disappear and be alone with nothing but his thoughts.

 

As he retreated, he heard the old woman again. “What’s with your son?”

 

He didn’t hear his mother sigh (he was too far away, and the late-summer birds were too loud in the trees), but he could practically hear it anyway. “I have no idea. He’s been like this for days now.”

 

Soonyoung walked onwards, as though he hadn’t heard them, and let the overgrown trees and plants swallow him up whole, holding him and hiding any trace of his existence.

 

In a way, Soonyoung’s glad they’re all too dimwitted to see a connection between this turn of events and Soonyoung’s sudden, out-of-character bitterness, because he can’t be bothered to cover it up anymore. If they discovered what he and Wonwoo had, at this point, he wouldn’t have the energy to defend himself or even deny it.

 

Alone, with nothing but his thoughts, Soonyoung replayed the conversation in his head. As many times as he went over it, only one thing struck him, and it made his blood boil and his heart pump faster. Wonwoo left the village, permanently maybe, and he couldn’t have the decency to at least inform Soonyoung personally before doing so?

 

Yes, Soonyoung would’ve tried to stop him. He would’ve barricaded his house and tried to talk him out of it in every way he could. There was no denying that. But for Soonyoung to only learn that Wonwoo was gone through word-of-mouth from gossiping old villagers felt so impersonal and so detached that it made him grind his teeth and rip at his hair.

 

He kicked at a rock and sent it soaring through the woods, and he heard it thump somewhere beyond his periphery. Kicking it didn’t satisfy his anger. In that moment, he wanted to bring the entire forest down.

 

But because he was Soonyoung, and because he was bigger than that (bigger than the entire forest), he sat down and folded his legs underneath him. He counted to ten and breathed, and he let himself cry until he didn’t feel upset anymore.

 

His anger bellowed out like the late-summer gusts of wind that picked up around him, blowing the thistle-bushes and tangling his hair and drying his damp face. Days passed and eventually the gusts died out, petering off and making way for sweet, sad denial.

 

 

But before they do, Soonyoung has a period of time, a small pocket somewhere between summer and autumn, where he resents Wonwoo. Resents him for not telling him he was going, for telling him he was okay and forcing him to believe the empty lie, for leaving him alone in a village of terrible people. He could’ve taken Soonyoung with him- he knew how much they both hated everyone here. But he left him alone to take the blow, and alone without anyone he cared for. He fled because he was a coward, Soonyoung thinks. He could’ve at least said goodbye.

 

 

Unlike Wonwoo, he doesn’t let his anger get the best of him. He doesn’t blame Wonwoo for letting it- no, but he’s learned time and time again never to bottle up his emotions, with Wonwoo being a fresh example. He lets everything wash over him, whisking him away and blowing him around.

 

When things settle into place, however, he feels hollow and cold. Hollow like the dead logs and the withering flowers and cold like the damp, empty gloom that autumn brings. He feels like his heart is going dormant, getting ready to hibernate through the winter. His heart is a late summer flower that closes up and turns brittle and brown.

 

It’s in these times that he wonders if Wonwoo left him because he didn’t love him. But that's impossible, and even in his bitter, heartbroken state, he knows it’s untrue. But what else explains Wonwoo just dropping everything and disappearing overnight?

 

When he pulls the mottled gray sweater from his closet and inhales the fading smell, the brand of laundry detergent Wonwoo used mixed with the calming scent of his skin, he comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t care _why_ Wonwoo left. He just wants him back. He wishes for him to come back. He has nothing but memories of him, and a terrible thought keeps creeping into his mind- that those memories and this sweater will be the only things he’ll eventually remember him by. And that, like an old tragedy, Soonyoung will grow old without ever seeing Wonwoo again, and he’ll carry their quiet love to the grave with him.

 

On a clear night, he’ll walk up the hill and stand alone in the dark, right outside the front gate that was left open and swinging in the wind. He doesn’t have it in him to care if there are dogs or any other creatures scoping him out, a thin, lone figure, and he laughs remembering how he used to fret over it.

 

Every silver point connecting the constellations together is sharp and clear when he looks up at the stars. He wishes again, upon the stars this time, for Wonwoo to return. When he’s finished, he’s left with thoughts of how Wonwoo’s under these same constellations and this same sky, wherever he may be.

 

 

When snow replaces rain and every house’s chimney is puffing out woody smoke, everything comes full circle. Winter is when he first met Wonwoo. And his sadness, which escalated into anger and denial and hollowness, returns. Full circle.

 

“Seasonal depression,” his surprisingly oblivious mother says, as though it explains everything.

 

 _Does seasonal depression span from early August to December, mother? That’s three seasons,_ he wants to say, but he bites his tongue and shrugs instead.

 

A new year comes without Wonwoo. His friends return, the ones who left the village to go to university, and his mother has a special way of bullying him into social situations he would prefer to avoid. No one understands why he sits alone by the window in his friends’ living rooms as they chatter and play old records, his eyes fixed on some point in the hills up above the village.

 

 

But little does Soonyoung know, as he sits at the foot of his bed at just past midnight on the first of January, that the New Year will bring everything back to the way it was. Never quite the same as before, but quite enough anyway.

 

 

 

When Soonyoung hikes, calf-deep in snow, up to the pine grove at the top of the hill, his mind is clear and empty. He sucks in icy air, growing colder by the minute because he timed his walk late in the evening out of habit. Something he’s learned again and again about himself is how he can never shake off old habits. He only comes up here near nightfall. It's the first habit he couldn’t shake off and the one that led to him meeting Wonwoo, and it plays just as big a role tonight.

 

He’s reached some kind of calm after the storm. He’s coping well, and he’s managed to put all the thoughts that make his heart swell and ache away enough to get on with daily life. Life is monotonous and painful, but he goes through it with a smile on his face, because his parents don’t deserve to worry about him. He can at least pretend to be “back to normal” for their sake.

 

When he rounds the final turn on his walk in the pine woods, he really doesn’t expect to see anyone. It’s always, always empty up here. The last time he’s seen someone up here is the last time he came to visit Wonwoo. The top of the hill is practically theirs, and theirs alone.

 

But this person is tall and lanky, and wrapped tightly in a black wool coat, and his hair is messy and black. His tall, austere posture, even from behind, reminds Soonyoung painfully of Wonwoo. He’s standing too close to the edge of the cliff, and Soonyoung considers warning him to stand farther back so he doesn’t fall.

 

He’s trained himself so well not to come up here and expect Wonwoo around every turn, that when the man turns around when he hears the sound of crackling branches and pine needles behind him, and Soonyoung sees his face, he gasps despite feeling like the wind’s been knocked out of him.

 

It _is_ Wonwoo. He’s more beautiful than Soonyoung ever remembers him being, but he hasn’t seen him in many, many months. His cheeks are fuller, his eyes brighter, his nose-tip pink from the cold. He’s absolutely the same, and that makes Soonyoung’s heart ache. But something’s changed too- something about his aura. And Soonyoung can sense this immediately, because he saw him at his best and at his worst, and he saw him in ways no one else did. He’s changed, but he’s changed for the better, and Soonyoung can’t pinpoint how.

 

Wonwoo’s looking as surprised as Soonyoung is. They both step forwards by reflex, but they don’t come any closer. The last thing Soonyoung could’ve imagined finding on his walk in the woods is Wonwoo. Wonwoo, who, as far as he is concerned, is gone for good and is never to return to the village again. Wonwoo, who doesn’t love him anymore, who fled the prejudice and the exile and, in Soonyoung’s mind, found somewhere better to be. Since he was left hanging, he had tied up the loose ends by himself so he wouldn't whittle away wondering and waiting for closure, and this sudden reappearance is forcing everything to come undone.

 

Neither of them know what to say. Neither of them have anything to say. They’re speechless and breathless and caught so off-guard by each other that it’s all Soonyoung can do not to back away and pretend he doesn’t recognize Wonwoo. He’s scared, and so is Wonwoo, but they’re for entirely different reasons.

 

His heart is pounding in his ears. “Why are you here?”

 

“Soonyoung-” Wonwoo begins, but Soonyoung backs away when he hears his voice. He recognizes that voice and he would recognize it anywhere, and somehow hearing it cements the reality and makes Soonyoung want to run. Why is Wonwoo here?

 

 _Go away!_ Soonyoung wants to shout, but he just turns his back to him and walks away silently instead, shaking his head as though he’s hallucinating. As though, if he just refuses to turn around and he tunes out Wonwoo’s voice calling him to come back, it’ll all cease to exist and he can stay in his state of heartbroken denial. Somehow, he’s wanted Wonwoo back, but seeing him again is cutting him raw and open and it hurts more than being away from him did.

 

 

 

“Soonyoung! Soonyoung! Soonyoung!”

 

His mind registers hearing the words, in Wonwoo’s voice, but it fashions them into a dream where Wonwoo is calling out for him. And in a dream, not reality, Soonyoung can accept that Wonwoo is back and that he’s still in love with him. In dreams, he can put his pain and heartbreak aside and love Wonwoo like he always did.

 

“Soonyoung!”

 

He wakes (or maybe he doesn’t, and it’s a dream within a dream wherein he wakes), and he checks the alarm clock on his bedside table. It’s well past midnight. He hears something hit the glass of the window above his bed, a hard sort of tap, and he gets up to open it and look outside.

 

The backyard and the edge of the woods are covered in a few inches of powdery snow. When he looks down, he sees something he can’t accept to be real. He sees Wonwoo standing in the bushes under his window, still wrapped in that wool coat of his, calling out for Soonyoung and waving for his attention. It can’t be reality. But if it can’t be reality, it means Soonyoung can’t be held accountable for whatever he says or does, because it’s nothing but a dream.

 

“Go away,” he tells him, beginning to slide the window shut.

 

“Wait! Soonyoung!”

 

Soonyoung stops short of closing the window, leaving a small gap to poke his head through and glower down at Wonwoo. “And why do you think I’d want to talk to you?”

 

Wonwoo is taken aback by this. If Soonyoung could see his face, he’d know that his words stung like poisonous thorns. If nothing had happened between them, yet Soonyoung had somehow told him this, he’d probably have cried. But right now, if he loses Soonyoung, he loses everything, so he keeps his emotions in check no matter how much it hurts him to hear it. He’s quiet for a long time, and Soonyoung stands and stares down at him just as silently. “Please?” He finally pleads.

 

For the first time in a half-year, Soonyoung puts on a heavier jacket and slips into his boots, tip-toeing past his parents’ bedroom and towards the backdoor. He unlocks it and slips out, and meets Wonwoo near the front of his house.

 

They walk silently, following the same path Soonyoung’s taken thousands of times since knowing Wonwoo, but this time with the usual destination trudging along beside him. Soonyoung is kicking his way through the snow and aggressively denying anything Wonwoo attempts to do.

 

“Watch out, there’s some black ice up ahead,” Wonwoo warns, beckoning to Soonyoung to follow him around it. Soonyoung shrugs and ignores him, walking through the ice anyway. He has his shoulders hunched up to seal himself off from conversation, and maybe to seal himself away from being hurt. He’s scared of even looking at Wonwoo.

 

But Soonyoung doesn’t hate him, and he wants more to do with him than he lets on. Because why else would he have put on clothes and followed Wonwoo up here this late at night if he didn’t?

 

It’s only when they reach the top of the hill that Soonyoung stops staring at the ground and absorbs the setting around him. The moon hangs high and round and milky white, and the glow of white snow underneath it is almost blinding to his eye. It feels like a setting that can only exist in a dream, and since everything seems surreal anyway, especially the fact that Wonwoo’s standing beside him, he’ll trust that it’s all his imagination. Wonwoo is watching him, terrified that he’s lost his Soonyoung, his trust and kindness and ever-flowing patience, and terrified that he’s let everything between them fall into ruin.

 

They’re still like they’ve been frozen into the snow, two silhouettes standing too far apart, outlined against the deep blue sky. That’s when Soonyoung talks. He only says four words, but they’re so bitter, so angry, and so sad, that they pierce Wonwoo the same way a guttural yell would. “You left me alone.”

 

He had been waiting for Soonyoung to speak with bated breath, but now he lets it out slowly. He takes some time before he answers, but they have all the time in the world, standing in a timeless place like this where nothing can possibly disturb them. The top of this hill is untouchable and far-removed, and that’s why everything automatically feels distant and cold if he and Soonyoung aren’t in each other’s arms. “I left to get better.”

 

Soonyoung, who has been standing with his back turned coldly to Wonwoo, chin held high and eyes narrowed, stubborn and angry, now turns to look at him. And the intensity of his gaze, one that pierces into Wonwoo like a dagger, making him recoil and step backwards. Soonyoung’s hurt, and he’s hurt him so badly by leaving that he won’t let any emotions but boiling anger and sadness show on his face. Those, he displays to Wonwoo, and his words drip with them. “What?”

 

“I wasn’t okay. My temper, my depression, my anxiety. You know about it all,” he says, nodding towards Soonyoung but still holding his head down. It’s sensitive to speak about, like he’s prodding at freshly-healed wounds, but it needs to be said and Soonyoung needs to know. “I left to get better.”

 

Soonyoung’s laugh is small and bitter, and it echoes around the empty hilltop and echoes in Wonwoo’s ears. “But you told me you were okay every time I asked.”

 

Wonwoo sighs the kind of sigh where his shoulders slump down and his lungs feel emptied of breath. He walks a few steps away, to the edge of the road, and looks on at the distant blue trees. “I know. I wasn’t a good enough person to you, Soonyoung.” Wonwoo’s still convinced he doesn’t deserve someone like Soonyoung, and he was always convinced that he somehow manipulated Soonyoung into loving him, only recently concluding that their love had always been un-riddled and simple.

 

Even after all this time, after his determination to be heartbroken and distant and to push Wonwoo away when he tries to explain and apologize, Soonyoung can’t accept that. He’s still defensive, because his love for Wonwoo still burgeons, too deeply-rooted and raw to just disappear. That’s why it all hurts so badly. That’s why he’s scared of Wonwoo’s return, because he still loves him, and he’s scared of being left behind again. “I think you were.”

 

Wonwoo smiles, but it looks sad, because Soonyoung reminds him of all of their memories together, all the days spent in each other’s arms, lips pressed together, and every impossible sacrifice Soonyoung did for him. “No, I wasn’t. I was practically using you as a coping mechanism. I was trying to smother out all my issues with you, and I dragged you into my mess. So I left, and now I’m back, and I’m better.” He walks over to Soonyoung again, and in his mind, all he can hope for is for Soonyoung not to turn his back and walk away from him again.

 

“And…?” Soonyoung coaxes Wonwoo’s words out one last time.

 

“And I’m asking you to let me love you again now.”

 

He knows what’s changed in Wonwoo now. Where his words were tentative, and where Soonyoung once had to finish his sentences and guess what he wanted, they’re simple and clear now. His mind seems unclouded, and his words are too. Everything about him seems more stable and grounded- where he was something like a ghostly wisp of a boy, delicate and on-the-brink, he’s full and tall and sure now.

 

Soonyoung starts to walk, but slowly enough that Wonwoo can follow him. It doesn’t feel like he’s running away- it feels like he wants Wonwoo to follow him somewhere. His steps are determined and he doesn’t look back, but Wonwoo steps into the footprints Soonyoung carves in the untouched snow they’re wading through. He’s leading him deep into the pine grove, and in the moonlight, Wonwoo can almost see as clearly as in the day. But the moonlight makes everything shiny and silver, and it bounces off of Soonyoung’s jet black hair and makes his skin glow brighter than the snow, in Wonwoo’s eyes.

 

Soonyoung leads him to the very end of the pine grove, the eastern edge where a plateau juts out in such a way that the distant, snowy mountains spill out before their eyes. Wonwoo remembers mentioning a long time ago that he had wanted to walk here. Soonyoung is thoughtful and kind beyond measure, even when he’s angry and probably even to his last breath, but only for Wonwoo.

 

 

He stops and turns to face him and not the mountains. The view is unimportant to him. His eyes are bright and he’s looking at a patch of nothing beyond Wonwoo, still refusing to look him in the eye. Because every time he looks at him, his hardened heart melts, and he remembers how much he loves him and how hard it is to be upset with him.

 

Wonwoo’s looking at his eyes, trying to get Soonyoung to look at him, and trying to figure out why Soonyoung’s so silent and pensive. He understands why he’d be upset, and he’d be surprised if Soonyoung _wasn’t_ , but he wants Soonyoung to talk to him.

 

“You know you hurt me a lot, right?” Soonyoung whispers, backing away when Wonwoo takes one step closer.

 

“I know.”

 

“And even though you did, I still love you. Too much.”

 

It’s not surprising. It really shouldn’t be. They never stopped loving each other, and Wonwoo doesn’t think they can. But it still takes him by surprise, just like the way the old Wonwoo could never wrap his mind around Soonyoung saying he loves him for who he is.

 

When Wonwoo comes even closer, so close that he can almost hear Soonyoung’s heartbeat quickening because it’s so empty and they’re so alone, Soonyoung backs into a tree, shaking snow that’d layered on the branches down on both of them. It wets Wonwoo’s hair, but he can’t be bothered with it. He wants to reach out and dust it off of Soonyoung’s head, though, but he’s still too scared to do that. “What’s wrong?”

 

 “Are you even real, or am I dreaming that you’re back?” He lifts his hand and stretches it out, and it hovers next to Wonwoo’s. He can almost feel the familiar warmth of his touch, that feeling of coming home after a long journey that Soonyoung’s safe chest seems to harbor when he burrows his face into it. “If I touch you, will you just fade away?”

 

Wonwoo smiles, and snow begins to fall. Delicate, lazy snowflakes that float down and land in Soonyoung’s hair, peppering it with silver and white, melting on his cheeks and making it easy for a few stray tears to trickle, unnoticed, when he hears Wonwoo’s reply. “No, I’m here.”

 

Soonyoung finally looks at him, his eyes bright with wetness, but as far as Wonwoo’s concerned, they look like fallen stars. “Then hug me.”

 

Now Wonwoo comes closer, and he’s grown since the last time Soonyoung’s seen him. He towers over Soonyoung when he pulls him over by the neck of his shirt like he always used to. Soonyoung closes his eyes and melts into his warmth and serenity, and he’s sure it’s not a dream when he feels surrounded by his protective embrace. It’s too good to be real, but it’s too good to be a dream. He’s grounded in reality when Wonwoo presses his soft lips against his forehead.

 

 

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> You read it all! Woo! Thanks, dearest reader, and I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> \- This was known as "Soonwoo AU" for 6 months, and throughout almost the entire writing and plotting process. I almost named it "Nocturne", then I almost named it "Of the Night", and then I renamed it this!  
> \- This has been posted posthumously because I died writing it.  
> \- It's extremely self-indulgent, and very heavily based off of irl events and settings (nearly word-for-word in most parts). A real spy's son living in a mansion atop a pine-forested hill in my old town, and onwards, which makes me the Soonyoung in this narrative. Even the setting is something very European/Mediterranean, much like where I live. The only difference is that it was a platonic relationship irl...  
> \- The setting and time period are not specified (I want it to be in a timeless place), but there are no cell-phones and not much modern technology.  
> \- This fic is my child. My favourite child. I think it always will be because it's very, very personal and real to me, and I put my whole heart into writing it. I even had second thoughts about whether or not I wanted to post it for everyone to read, which is ridiculous.  
> Morals of the story (lmao):  
> \- Don't fall into the sheeple mentality of judging people because of prejudice.  
> \- Time and kindness can heal things.  
> \- When there's a downhill, there's always an uphill. (let me make my stupid joke pls)
> 
> Last but not least, thanks to 3 special people (especially a certain Bente, my Bento box) for putting up with me as I wrote this monster! I love you!


End file.
